1000 Moons: grief process visualizing a lifetime

What does it look like to imagine a life time?

1000 Moons is an art installation and grief process of 1000+ hand-formed paper moons, representing every full moon cycle witnessed by my grandmother from her birth to her death. 1000 Moons envisions a lifetime as a tangible space, where viewers can locate themselves within the full span of another life.



How to Contribute
This fundraiser is set at $10 "per moon" but donations of any amount starting at $5 are all celebrated with gratitude. Donations in honor of a loved one are warmly welcomed. As part of your contribution, please consider commenting to share your healing traditions in grief (instructions here). I will be incorporating your words into upcoming exhibitions of 1000 Moons.

Please donate only if you can do so comfortably. If you are unable to offer a financial donation, but would like to contribute your healing traditions, please email your words to me here and I will share your contribution as an equal part of the fundraiser community.

About 1000 Moons
The 1000 Moons project began shortly after both my grandparents died of Covid, as I struggled to stay grounded in my own life, and my understanding of time became distorted and unreal. In response, I am hand-forming 40 oversize sheets of paper with kelp, sheet music, and other materials linked to their history, and cutting them apart into 1,175 circles to represent each full moon in my grandmother's 94 years of life. Stringing each circle together to form a hanging corridor, 1000 Moons creates a physical pathway through time and memory. 


I imagine my own life time overlapping with hers in the physical space occupied by the 1000 Moons: how many of these moons we saw together, how many she shared with my grandfather, my father, my aunts. Which moons were darkest, and which shone bright? How do I measure the time passed since?

In the absence of any time-based American tradition of mourning and grief, during a moment in history when existing grief rituals have been scattered, this work has become a new tradition for me to understand, honor, and process the time span of a life. Sharing this work is my way of inviting community into grief, in direct response to the isolation I felt after their deaths.


Schedule of Events
From October 2021 to March 2022, I am sharing my ongoing process of creating the moons: in a series of virtual conversations, an immersive video walk-through, and physical displays in public space. During each event, I invite all who have experienced loss and grief, especially during this current crisis, to share their new traditions for finding and following a healing path. I invite all participants to visualize their own life times, and those of their loved ones, within this space of 1000 Moons.
Click here for the full schedule of events .

Your Contribution Creates Community

Your support will fund hundreds of hours of my time creating the artwork and managing the community events, materials costs, and photo / video documentation of each installation.

"Take the time you need" is almost meaningless when no financial or cultural structure exists to support that time, and those needs. Your contribution helps to create a vital community where grief can be witnessed and shared, not just in a passing moment, but as an ongoing process that may sometimes overtake everything else in our lives. Your contribution allows me to continue my work in creating community around grief, and supports my year-plus of active work on the 1000 Moons project as a meaningful part of the world we want to be.

Thank you for being here with me.