My mother grew up in Berlin during WWII. Part Jewish, she experienced persecution, rape, death of family and friends, fear. One of her escapes, as for many of her generation, was heavy cigarette smoking. Eventually this caught up with her: she died after a long battle with lung cancer in the fall of 2007.

This series symbolizes the psychological process of going through grief. I use the simplicity of symbols and the immediacy of moods. The sequence of images were chosen to represent the change from dark to light, from closed to open, as I accept my mother’s transformation from physical to spirit.