"Time, twisting on and on, always taking away and never bringing anything back, could kill people years before they extricated themselves from their bodies and flew off to God. I had heard her float through the hallways of the house, whispering the names of her children as she blew out the lamps. John Randal, Mary Elizabeth, Martha. It sounded like prayer, like some sort of invocation. I'd been in a Catholic church once, down on toward Natchez, and I'd heard the same sound when the priests approached the altar, muttering the sounds that would bring Christ back to them.
Kym Hepworth / Reliquary / 2007 / mixed media / 8 3/8 x 6 1/8 3 1/4 in.
© 2007 - Kym Hepworth. All Rights Reserved. Available at inthecrystalpalace.
I didn't much care for that sort of thing, and I had no faith that a priest could work such magic, but I found myself praying that someday, maybe, Carrie McGavock would perform that miracle, that time would get all wrapped up on itself and confused, and that those children would walk the hallways with their mother again. There was beauty in that woman. Not in her pain, but in the part of her obscured by the pain and the black crinkly dress and the black thread of time.
Kym Hepworth / The Widow / 2010 / mixed media / 13 1/8 x 9 7/8 x 4 1/4 in.
© 2011 - Kym Hepworth. All Rights Reserved. Available at inthecrystalpalace.
I saw a young and beautiful woman, a woman who could lift burdens and redeem men. I wanted to be redeemed, I wanted to be absolved. And I wanted that woman, the angel who walked in the cemetery among her dead children and kissed their gravestones when she thought no one was looking, to be the one doing the redeeming. I had no name for that, no word. Just a feeling."
(source for quote: The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks, published by Warner Books, New York, NY © 2005)
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