Max and Me

Finding the father I never knew through art

Begun in 2024, I think of this new series as a collaboration with my artist father who died before my first birthday. He was a gifted illustrator and watercolorist. I’ve been incorporating and sometimes reinterpreting his images in my work created both in paint and fiber. It is a way to get to know the man who gave me life but did not live to share mine.

THE STORY

A gifted young artist.  Red hair, stocky build, shy, and sensitive.  He is newly home, after years away from the freckled, curly-haired bride who has pined for him. He has been part of the map corps serving in India and the South Pacific during World War II. 

We will start the story here. It’s as good a place as any, as there are so many pieces missing. He has arrived home with sheaths of watercolor studies. In them are costumed dancers, minarets, gardens with palm trees, floating saris, a woman with a cluster of terracotta jugs on her head.  Some are quick, others more detailed. All are deftly done, exuding the confidence of a much older artist.

Soon he illustrates books; he illustrates greeting cards. He makes clever cards for his beloved, freckled wife.  He plans an advertising agency with his friend … also named Max. There is a baby girl with curly red hair. There is a snowstorm. The doctor can’t come. Then he is dead. He was 31 and I had not had my first birthday. 

I have had a lifetime (more than twice his now) to collect details, and still the story of my father is so thin. But the art, the art has been there to talk to me. I have been aching to find a way to reply.

Floating Toward Joy

Fiber work: cotton quilt, digital composite printed on canvas, applique’, thread painting,

39.5” H X 28.75”W

Detail Image of the man is printed on canvas It is a composite of a watercolor painting and a sepia pastel drawing by Max Glick, set into my textile work. The text is my own

Text reads: Time brings a kind serenity, washing over memory, easing forgiving, pacifying, floating toward joy

Silver Dancers

Fiber work: Double layer ,cotton canvas. organza, glazed linen, digital images appliqué

58”H X 28”W

Details; Bottom layer is natural cotton canvas with applique’. Overlay is organza with linen and appliqued cotton and organza. Images are digitally manipulated from a watercolor by Max Glick printed on Evolon ( spun polyester.) The work is suspended from aluminum channel allowing space between the panels.

Still

Fiber work: Linen strips and gold organza sewed to cotton, digital print on rice paper, acrylic paint

22”H X 20.75”W

Details: Central figure is from an ink drawing by Max Glick printed on rice paper. The text is my own

Text reads: Who was this man? And who will make a story of this? The storyteller is now silent. A time that is scarcely etched in memory. Yet there is a path. The voices of a world largely rewritten speak still. There is life here still.

Nanda Devi

Fiber work: Hand dyed canvas, hand-dyed organza, digital image on silk, digital image transfer on Evolon (spun polyester), appliquéd, quilted

41.5”H X 30.5”W

Details: Standing figure is a watercolor painting by Max Glick printed on Evolon, a spun polyester

Mountain landscape is extracted from a watercolor painting by Max Glick, printed on silk and embroidered

A Shared Dream

Fiber work:cotton, hand dyed organza, appliquéd, digital image on silk

24”H X 17”W

Details: Watercolor by Max Glick is digitally printed onto silk. with gold organza overlay. Text is my own

Text reads: You only dreamed this place and yet you brought me there

In The Company of Trees

Woven canvas strips sewn to canvas, acrylic paint and medium, digital transfer on cotton, original pen and ink on spun polyester, machine embroidery, appliqué.

20”H X 20”W

Details: Central figure is a watercolor painting by Max Glick digitally transfered onto cotton, flanked by my pen and ink trees

Details: Image in frame is by Max Glick. It is of a bronze god brought home from India in the 1940’s. I still have it in my home and have pictured it set near his painting. Two gods smiling at the confluence.

Gods Smile

Oil over acrylic on pumice , Wood panel

30”H X 24W.

Mason and Three Birds

Fiber work: Hand-dyed organza, cotton and metallic organza appliqued onto silk grass-cloth paper with digital transfer on Evolon (spun polyester). Mounted onto stretched canvas

20”H X 20”W

Details: Central image, is a watercolor painting by Max Glick, digitally transferred onto Evolon. images of birds are mine printed on silk

Moment Delivered

Fiber work: acrylic on burlap, digital transfer on cotton, hand-dyed organza, hand stitched. Text is my own.

20”H X 16”W.

Details: Watercolor by Max Glick is digitally transferred onto cotton. Text is my own

Text reads: You captured this place, these people, this moment, so foreign to you then, never dreaming to deliver it here so many years later

Moonlit Dancer

Acrylic on canvas with digitally manipulated images printed on rice paper, collaged and painted

20”H X 16”W

Details: All image elements are taken from various pieces of Max Glick’s work. I have recolored them both digitally and in paint

Madras Dancers

Fiber work: Repurposed cotton madras patchwork quilt, digital transfers on Evolon (spun polyester), appliquéd cotton figures,

30” H X 22.5 W

Details: Indian dancers are the watercolor works by Max Glick

Pink Scarf

silk-screen, hand -dyed organza, digital image on silk, gold leaf, mounted on board

24”H X 20”W

Details: Central image printed on sheer silk is by Max Glick. It floats over my original silkscreen fringed with fiber. Leaves are hand dyed organza with dyed gauze on top of a pumice coated, painted board

Water for a Garden

Fiber work: Photoshop composite printed on whole cloth (linen/cotton) and quilted, appliquéd with hand -dyed organza, thread painting.

45”H X 32.5”W

Details: Image is a digital composite with figure by Max Glick set into my painting. The central figure has been made transparent to integrate the two images

Details: Central image by Max Glick. The text is my own

Text reads: A testament to ties stitched in time between men and place and memory

A Testament to Ties

Acrylic on canvas with digital transfer, fabric, metallic hand embroidery

14”H X 15”W

Details: Central figure is a silhouette of a dancer recreated from a watercolor by Max Glick. The text is my own

Text reads: In your short time you grabbed passages of the word, fortunate only in that you saw so much. Those distant and exotic places you could not have fathomed from your American home. You, placed there by terrors that shook the world. Yet you took those places and lovingly spread them across so many watercolor images. Images that have lasted to declare ”I was here, Here I am. You do not have to search for me, Here I am.”

Inscription

Acrylic on canvas

40”H X 27.5”W