If you hang around long enough, everything comes full circle.

©M. A. Hackett. Video Still. In My Mother's House, 1995

"Domestic ethnography is a kind of supplemental autobiographical practice; it functions as a vehicle for self examination, a means through which to construct self-knowledge through recourse to the familial 'other." —Michael Renov, Domestic Ethnography and the Construction of the "Other" Self.

I recently rediscovered the above quote from an artist statement I wrote in 1995 while working on a documentary with my mother. That same year I received a workshop grant from POV television to develop the documentary and got to hang out with some sharp filmmakers in Minneapolis-St Paul for a few days. I vaguely remember being on the street and tossing my hat in the air Mary Tyler Moore style, because well, of course you'd do that in Minneapolis-St Paul. The 1995 video took place in the same home I have once again been investigating— this time through the act of painting. For a moment I'm going to avoid the psychology of all this and just be grateful I've had the last few years to have my art and my life catch up with one another in a double helix flying camel sort of way. 

I sold my video and audio equipment last week to help fund a decent digital camera for documenting the work. I hadn't shot, directed or cut anything in almost 15 years and when I went back to painting I swore I'd never leave...

Mary Addison Hackett, Flocked, 2014 oil on linen, 10 x 8 in. 

To be continued...