Stephen Mead

Poem, painting combined in memory of Tom, a kind an enduring spirit always.
People in photo include: Thomas Michael DiFrancesco

Mother (first name not given) Mead of New York: This image comes from a series in progress, “Our Spirit Life”. The images for the series are photomontages which actually had a long hibernation period. My mom passed away a decade ago (2000) in January and then this year (2012) in the same month my father passed away. Both times boxes of family photos came into my possession. Over the years, I'd written poems and done tribute pieces of art for my parents, but I’d been intending to do something with these inherited photos in particular. Going through them again as I prepared a slideshow for dad’s Wake lines of a Laurie Anderson song kept coming to mind: “when my father died it was like a whole library burned to the ground.” Indeed, knowing how much of my insular upbringing has vanished I created these montages as a memento mori for the life which was, yet also as an acknowledgement of how much it is encapsulated as a living story within me .