THE BURDEN

I had an image in my mind of myself with my husband and four children in ascending order on my shoulders, like an Eskimo totem pole. I had walked home from the UCLA campus’ art department taking a half hour to walk three blocks in order to change gears or go through the locks of a canal. I was in graduate school, where I was as honest and productive and smart as I could be. These qualities may not be as advisable at home. There it is just as well not to see or hear so much. After much struggle, I realized that I could leave the house, when the children did for school, without doing the dishes are making beds. That was a big step for me. I made a small drawing of the image and with wax softened under the warm water tap, I made the figure of the woman with the man on her back. And I drew it on the etching plate. This is the two tier process Leonardo daVinci used... of making a tableau and then drawing it.

There is economy in such work: one figure can stand for five, one tree on the campus can represent all the trees. If the man is not walking, does he need feet? I printed it first in black and white and then decided it was too severe and needed color . I used two different blues and red on sections of the plate and printed it.

When I looked at the print, I noticed the woman’s feet that I had drawn on the plate. They are far too small for her to carry the weight of her body and walk. I remembered the Chinese royalty who had their feet bound so they could not run away or work. My husband, a psychiatrist, said, that it not a burden, it is your dependency. I felt in a middle generation, from one in whcih my older brothers went to medical school and I to college to get old enough to be married. I had very little means to make a living outside the home.

Later, I typed to help get my daughter through medical school.

I believe it is about trying to do many tasks at the same time and any one of which I could do, but I was attempting to do them altogether. The medical school’s Department of Psychiatry had Grand Rounds at my art gallery, where the dream art work was exhibited.

The young residents who were the age that I was when I made this print gravitated to it. Somehow they identified with the feeling of being overburdened, as many of them had children and were in training and have moonlighting jobs in addition and are trying to keep their balance.

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