I enlarged and dry mounted some of the text (20" x 30") so that the writing would play a primary role. I used the shelf that ran along two walls to place some photos and artifacts, as you can see here.

The photographs and artifacts I used give the feeling of accuracy--of actual lived lives--but "I" in a sense make my parents (and myself in relation to them) characters in a life story. HOMECOMING, to borrow a phrase from Andre Breton, is "taken from life" ("pris sur le vif"). Our lives are discontinuous like the photographs and artifacts I have included in the Installation. Through selective remembering, I tried to create some continuity.

Vistors entered the context of the literary work HOMECOMING. They could walk among the images and artifacts and read selections of enlarged text hung on the walls. Here are some visitors beginning the tour.

  
Gisela Brinker-Gabler (right, front) and my daughter Angela Comprone (right, back)
Click on the image above to view a Quicktime movie.
Nancy Zimmet (left)

When my parents moved from Massachusetts to Florida in the mid-1960s, I was only able to visit them once or twice a year. Around 1985 my mother had some serious health problems and I went to see her after she got out of the hospital. I thought she was dying. She learned to live with these problems and outlived my father, but it was then--in that moment--that I was aware that "Suddenly My Mother Has Grown Old," the title of the poem that begins HOMECOMING.

Doll with Wedding Veil