This is a little story about the 15th anniversary of my mom’s passing, and the ritual I’ve adopted since my artist residency at BoxJelly: every year, I sculpt her face using clay with my hands. I use no tools, no photo references— only memory and touch. This ritual is not about artistic or technical skill. It’s an exercise in love and memory. Itʻs a ritual of love and being with my mother.
Since that artist residency, I’ve done this annually, always recording the making process but this is the first year that I put on a white dress and put a ribbon in my hair – as if I was going to visit her grave. Instead of making in the privacy of my art studio, this was also the first year I decided to take this practice outside. Rather than being enclosed by the walls of a studio or the safety of a home, instead of being in a little box, I gave both of us that liberation and that connection to the earth.
This is a love story, but itʻs also a ghost story.
I began the making process with a prayer. I lit a candle meant for mothers and said a few words. When I was ready to begin, I took off my shoes to ground myself to the earth. I grabbed my working surface – a slab of Acacia Formosa, native to the Philippines – and my bag of clay. I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I wanted to be with my mom and touch her face.
I mold the clay and sculpt her face. I mold the clay to the size of a real face—one you could cradle in your hands. I push the clay to form her cheekbones. I sweep clay with my fingertips to form the bridge of her nose. Her cheek begins forming and fits in my palm. I use my nails to form her nostrils. My fingers brush over the eye sockets. For some reason, I donʻt include the eyes this year. I’m not sure why. It just felt right to leave them as soft hollows. Little valleys.
I spend extra time on her lips. I try to remember them exactly but Iʻm afraid that I donʻt. The lips are my favorite part of her face to touch and remember… I had the honor of applying her favorite lipstick to her dry, solid lips at her wake.
I have this worry, this fear in me, that one day, I won’t remember her face. I worry that one day on her anniversary in the future, when she’s been gone longer than I’ve ever expected to be living without her, I worry and fear that one day I’ll be sitting in front a slab of clay and nothing will come. Itʻll be missing everything, and I won’t be able to touch her face at all anymore. Iʻm afraid that I’ll forget all her features. That’s why I keep doing this. That’s why I need to keep making. Even though she’s no longer here on this Earth, I know she’s with me always, yet this ritual keeps me in physical proximity of her memory and love. This is so important to me especially because I have no bones and no grave to visit.
When I finish her face—her bone structure, her lips, her nose—I lower my face to the earth to meet hers. I cup her cheeks, and bring my face down to hers. I let our noses touch and I breathe her in and we breathe together. And at that moment when my ritual was complete the rain came. A big heavy rain, unlike the mist that embraced me during the making process, a thick heavy rain started to pour. I could feel her. I could feel her and all of our loved ones. I could feel the love of all my ancestors. It was like a parade of them, and I started to worry about the face I had just finished sculpting. The raindrops started falling on the smooth clay leaving imprints. I thought about saving her face and saving my work by retouching the places where the rain has fallen, but I decided not to. I decided that I didn’t need to retouch the clay and make it smooth again. I could let heaven’s tears have a place on her face. I let the rain leave its marks on her face. And so I just sat in the rain, in that parade of my ancestors, and I started crying.
I sat in the rain and started crying. Overwhelmed with missing her and also overwhelmed with love, from her and all my ancestors before me. I am grateful. Grateful she’s no longer suffering, and I know she wouldn’t want me to suffer either.
As I compose myself and wipe my tears from crying, I hear this beautiful, joyful music. I’ve heard this music before in the middle of the night and in the darkness. I look to my right to the street to see if anyone’s there or if a car blasting its radio is passing by, but I’m alone. No one is there. Iʻm still alone under Heavenʻs tears. Out in the pouring rain, surrounded by love.