The Comfort Series was made during a period of mourning. My father died and left me forty years’ worth of family slides. Each slide held memories of family, much like the quilts my grandmother made using scraps of fabric from family clothing. So, I stitched the slides together like my grandmother stitched fabric. Using grandmas crochet thread and buttons, accumulated by four generations of women, I made garments that reminded me of specific family members; aprons, scarves, shawls. Joining images of relatives, I had lost with the still living; I felt like I was stitching my family back together again.

My, Scottish immigrant, grandfather always wore a three-piece suit, carried an umbrella, wore a hat and silk neck scarf every day; unless his job required a uniform. I knew him as an artist but he worked as a pastry chef or making cheese at a dairy. This scarf is about the size of James Robertson Benvie’s silk scarf.