Care House is a memorial to my mom and the house that became her.

As an experiment in eliciting meaning and memory from place, it is sited where it was inspired but resonant with the wider experience of emptying a home and parting with a parent. 

Sound, video, and material interventions consider the shifting roles of caregiving and caretaking, the enduring of terminal illness, and the being of a daughter.

Each work documents intuited, invented rituals performed in this house between its owner's passing and putting the house on the market.

April 1- May 1, 2012
Q&A Brunch 11am April 14
Sat - Sun 10am - 5pm
Mon - Fri by appointment

 Care House is an intimate, invitation only installation that requires an access code. If you are interested in viewing it, contact me at 832.372.9476 Carrie@HearOurHouston.com

floorplan drawing by Rachel Wilkins

dress

Video stills from Dress

Before I had a chance to keep the dresses I remember my mom being beautiful in (that I wanted to grow up to be beautiful in) they were gotten rid of and I came home to find her closet empty. Dress began as a way to try on these dresses but evolved as a measuring practice of the space between her and my attempts to meet her there.

Walk Through Video

so you have some questions

 

photos and interview by Jess Schreibstein

Care House is open April 1 - May 1, 2012
Brunch (featuring the dishes my mom taught me) Saturday, April 14, 11 am

Please let me know when you plan to visit Care House so I can set you up with the access code, instructions, and maybe a carpool buddy:

832.372.9476 Carrie@HearOurHouston.com

windchime ritual

My mom loved sitting on the patio, smoking cigarettes, and listening to her windchimes.

For as long as I can remember my mom always wanted windchimes for Mother's day. For as long as I've been journeying back to her house to clean it out and kiss it goodbye, I have been bringing a windchime as an offering. The tree they all hang on was planted by my parents when they had the house build. These windchimes are filled with the wind while filling the emptier house with a song she would like.

When the house is put on the market, these windchimes will be relocated to the playgrounds of all of the elementary schools where my mom was a teacher for 37 years.

photo and interview by Jess Schreibstein. feild recording by Ryan Edwards

care

video still from Care

After six months of being the primary caregiver for my mom through her battle with pancreatic cancer, I had my own chain of emergency surgeries and illnesses of my that left me bedridden  for six months. Care is a video that layers my body's memorized movements to explores both sides of the shifting care giver/care receiver role.

                                                                                 photo by dabfoto creative

nightgown

Of all the objects that I lost my mom's nightgowns were the most dear embodiments of her. I am learning how to make paper from Armando Rodriguez and I am using my mom's belongings pictured below to make a replacement nightgown.

photos by Jess Schreibstein

Materials list:

Her Baptism bible
Love and apology notes from her highschool sweetheart
Valentines Day cards from her Daddy
$5 from her Mother
Highschool diploma
Yearbook signatures from highschool and college
Sorority pledge cards and welcome cards
Congratulations cards for graduation
Thank you cards from first year teaching
Congratulations cards for wedding
Congratulations cards for son's adoption
Get well cards from surgery to be able to have a baby
Program from the service when her son was baptised
Congratulations cards for birth of daughter
Her mother's obituary
Cigarette butts
Binaca breath spray
Her Dove soap
Her favorite smelling lotion
The paper towels and toilet paper she always had wadded up in her pockets
Sympathy cards from death of her parents
Mothers day cards
Happy birthday cards
Emails she printed out of fights with her daughter in law
Admissions receipts from Cancer center
Grocery shopping list made by daughter for her mom in last months
Daily log of food she was able to eat in last months
Thank you cards from last year teaching
Get well cards from last illness
Pink flowers from outside her house in Spring time
Original copy of the eulogy her daughter wrote and read at her memorial service

photos by dabfoto creative

songs of the house

The voice of my mom's house was recorded in two songs. You can listen here, but are also invited to perform these scores yourself during your visit:


The Song of Arriving
Opening all of the doors, raising all of the blinds, opening all of the windows, turning on all of the lights, turning on all of the fans, airing everything out in a looped ritual through the entire house.

The Song of Departing
Extinguishing all of the lights, turning off all of the fans, shutting all of the doors, closing all of the windows, shutting all of the blinds in a linear ritual until you leave and lock yourself out of the house. 

couch raft

This is the ditch outside my neighborhood where we used to catch crawdads, go dirt biking, and video our Blair Witch Project spoofs. Now it has these fountains that aerate the water and make it seem like seem like a property asset for a newly "lakeside" community.

This is the big couch in Care House that feels like the hearth of the home. It's been reupholstered twice and every fiber in it has a twin fiber made of memory. It is too loaded with meaning for me to keep or throw away, so as the last hoorah when Care House closes, I am going to turn this couch into a raft to float (or sink) in the ditch outside my neighborhood.

Aesthetically, the fountains seem like an attempt to attract people to a place that my neighborhood is not. It is called Williamsburg Settlement, and all the street names are suppose to evoke this motif: Christopher Wren, Bucktrout, Calvaryman. The houses are about 30-40 years old, the trees are mature, and it feels well settled into.  The neighborhood has been emptying out for a few years now, everybody wants to move to even newer developments even further out. Beyond this ditch you can see the gigantic dinosaur bone ramp for SH99 that was just constructed to channel them. Doubleparked streets for swim meets are now just dotted with elderly couples walking at dusk.

Your drive to Care House takes you down the unrelenting copy & paste landscape of I-10. I enjoy the mischief of performing a deeply personal project in what feels like endless, increasingly anonymous suburban sprawl. In addition to frightening the neighbors' children, I like this little raft and the idea of inserting some myth back into these waters.

couch apart

boat frame

Now that the house is sold I'm holding onto the materials I have left of it. As I started working with the curves of the couch wood the raft idea left me and I began researching funeral boats and Charon's (the ferryman) vessle for transport between worlds. At 5'1" long inside and skeletal as a frame rather than a containing form, I think I may in some way be making a custom casket.

Positive Negative Casts

An artist, mother and sister-in-law in mourning cast the universally soothing moment of a washcloth on the eyes

A hospice chaplain cast the gesture of just being there with someone, with the material of his induction into the medical profession, and the impression of his grandfather's legacy

A medical student who recently suffered deep personal losses cast the "I understand" moment of crossing the patient/person boundary

A physical therapist of eleven years cast the yoga pose of taking care of herself, including the forms and medications of the newly diagnosed condition that forced her into it

An and patient artist casts the clinical but caring gesture of monitoring her own pulse

If you're interested in making  a cast, we would:
-Meet at Care House
-Trade care giving / care receiving stories
-Decide on a meaningful and relevant gesture
-Hold the involved body parts still in gooey plaster for 20 min
-Display the resulting sculpture in Care House
-Post an image of it and whatever documentation you desire (anonymous or not) to http://www.thecarrieart.com/carehouse

The process takes less than an hour.

Susan Barry is a nurse and midwife with countless caregiving experiences. We made this cast of her hand touching my face, the gesture of the touch Susan's mom gave her the last time they saw each other as well as the last touch that my Mom gave me in her right mind. Susan's cast includes her mother's cherished belongings: the last notes on life she wrote, pebbles from her favorite park, her brother's birth announcement, and V-mail she received as an army nurse during WWII.

If you'd like to make a cast during your visit to Care House, e-mail carrie@HearOurHouston.com or call 832.372.9476.

photos by dabfoto creative

Care House Brunch

Thanks for coming yall!

photos by Dean Liscum

works

Care
sited video

Dress
sited video

Bathe
sited video 

Nightgown
paper sculpture

Song of Arriving
sound and participatory score

Song of Departing
sound and participatory score 

Windchime Ritual
performance practice and sound installation

Casts
participatory sculpture series 

Walls Could Talk
photograph intervention 

Compassion Readymade
installation

For Every Future Mothers Day, Love Mom
drawing series

Couch Raft
ditch intervention

 photo by dabfoto creative

response

Kelly Klaasmeyer

Ayanna Jolivet McCloud

Robert Boyd

Dean Liscum

Harbeer Sandhu's feature on Care House will appear in issue #90 of Cite Magazine.

Thank you to everyone who wrote in the guestbook, all of you who sent emails or left treasures, and to Yet for your audio walk through.