"Mother Memory" (Art Exhibit Series, 3/10)
Toti O’Brien
The following is part of the Mother Memory art exhibit series, a pairing of literature with art curated by the exhibitor, Toti O’Brien. Oyster River Pages is pleased to present this series in weekly installments.
In my eyes, a vision of Alexis Rhone Fancher against a black backdrop—perhaps, a curtain or a shade. Her dress, hair (and her hat!) were black as well, but they certainly didn’t get confused with the scenery. Covid had just begun, and Zoom readings were tentative at best. I was struck by how assertive her presence was—unlike so many others, still uncertain and shy. Quietly, and yet implacably, she managed to dissolve the screen and infiltrate the viewers’ feelings, exactly as it occurs when she performs live around town. I was also surprised on realizing that she had been invited to that particular series, known for the limitations imposed to contents and language. Before reading, she smiled at the host and said, “Frankly, it was quite hard to select my pieces. You warned me, ‘No sex and no death.’ What is left?” Luckily, she was able to find something.
Either poetry, prose poetry, or poetic prose, Fancher’s words go straight to the core—the heart—of the matter. Without ado (and with no pretense, almost casually) they reach the vital organ and immediately make themself at home, nonchalantly roaming from chamber to chamber. No wonder, if at the very end she seems to have blood on her fingers. It is known that noir is part of her inspiration, but crime isn’t what comes to mind when I look and listen. I see a midwife, maybe from another time—one who sticks her hand in and grabs, pulls and never lets go, never diverts her eyes.
I Was A Mediocre Mother,
and my boy died. I could not save him. I was helpless, useless. I threw at him every promised cure, each specialist, surgeon and miracle healer, any breakthrough drug trial I could find. I took him to the Evangelicals, paid a shaman for his guaranteed-to-cure-you voodoo spell. You name it, I grasped at it with increasing desperation. Toward the end, the faith healers prayed over him, told him Jesus would heal him if he believed strongly enough. He said he did, but it was never enough. The doctors said they could cut the cancer out of my boy and save his life, so they did, but they lied. Maimed, and still the cancer lurked. From his lungs it spread everywhere; a deadly tsunami that decimated him at 26.
In September my son will be dead 17 years, and still, I run the dark moments of his demise over and over in my head every day like a rosary. The throbbing pain in his right arm that first announced the disease. The initial denial - there must be some mistake, and then the full-fledged panic. Each doctors’ appointment, our hopes raised, then dashed; how the surgeon pronounced him “cancer free” tempting Fate to respond by serving up an extra helping, big enough to drown him. My personal stations of the cross, I relive each scenario in my head, as if I could do anything about it now, all these years in the future. Still, I ponder, what else could I have done?
I’ve worked it out in fine detail. How I’d have taken him on a tour of Europe, indulged his every whim, life a feast, a joyful celebration. I would have let him have his wholeness, life as it was before the diagnosis, and savor the short time he had left. My life since then? Reruns, mostly; my boy’s life and death on repeat. Just stop! I chide myself, each time I open death’s door, but nothing changes. I can’t not do it, even though it’s always a rerun, and crazy is me, doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome, the one where he doesn’t die.
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Published in Book of Matches, 2025
Melinda Smith Altshuler | Moving, Not Moving | Sculptural Installation | 62”x62”x37” | 2025
Of her grandfolks, who came to the States with nothing, Melinda Smith Altshuler recalls, “They only owned second-hand stuff, imbibed with the lives of others—which helped, though, to build a new life, ours... That (as well as my childhood fascination with Dad’s small metal scrapyard) is where my love story with objects and time begins.” Smith Altshuler’s work has always impressed me with a sense of deceptive frailty. The light (one of the mediums she can masterly employ) seems to go unimpeded through the diaphanous surfaces she likes to hang in midair. Beware. They refract it, instead. They look like open windows, but they are mirrors reflecting truths, sometimes, hard to look at. Furniture and other objects are suspended as well, defying gravity, like ghost imagery from a dream. But they aren’t projections or shadows. On the contrary, they maintain their rigorous structure, orderly and implacable, as if to contrast the nebulous shapes that surround them, as if to disprove their own levitation. From these paradoxes derives a feeling of mystery that imbues the installations (making them into a kind of elegant, gigantic hieroglyphs) as well as each of their parts—every chair, picture-frame, drawer, book, loose leaflet.
Moving, Not Moving is one of the artworks we selected for the show. “I added small wheels,” says the artist, “to the chairs. They are ready to go, but they stand still. Spare wheels are at hand, just in case.” The chairs are adorned by an incongruously delicate trim made of feather-thin paper fringes, metal, minuscule mirrors, reminiscent of decorated saddlery. The silver-and-black combination evokes both a hearse and, in passing, suggestions of bondage, leather, chains. “The idea,” says Smith Altshuler, “is that of the fits and starts we all experience while processing trauma, in particular grief and loss. At first,” she adds, “an empty table frame was in the center. In my sleep, I felt that it was restrictive, and probably unneeded. Sometimes, we are our own frame.”
Alexis Rhone Fancher lives and works in the Mojave Desert. A multiple Pushcart nominee, she has won Best MicroFictions 2025. She has been published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Spillway, The American Journal of Poetry, Plume, Diode, and elsewhere. She is the author of ten poetry collections, most recently, TRIGGERED, (MacQueens) and BRAZEN. (NYQ). www.alexisrhonefancher.com
Melinda Smith Altshuler was born and raised in Los Angeles, where her family has lived for about a century. She relates to her family history and lore through objects and impressions, which become part of her art toolbox. Her multi-media conceptual work include cast-off materials found and worn with the sheen of time and imperfection (including found metal scraps that become the bones, and provide the strength, of her sculptures/installations) along with performances and photo-based projects that observe and question life conditions around us. Melinda Smith Altshuler’s work is about the translucency of question: how we see the mystery of thought, what we choose to question. Altshuler has shown in Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporaneo-Costa Rica, Jerusalem Biennale, Palazzo Dei Consoli, Gubbio Italy, in France, in Korea, and at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Los Angeles. www.melindasmithaltshuler.com
