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Womb Book – mixed media
K.L.C. Jones
Vashon Island, WA

When my son died at his birth in 1999, grief ravaged our lives and set hope, home, and heart adrift, disembodied. In this crippling, I was able to do nothing but make art. It wasn't the pretty art of museums or the polished art of academia. It was raw, my insides turned out, a loud defiant scream that said grief may have destroyed me, but it would not
isolate me.

This Womb Book is one of the original seven created for an exhibit in 2003. The opening night of the show was scheduled to last two hours. According to statistics I gathered at that time, I knew approximately seven babies would be stillborn every two hours in the United States. So I created seven Wombs to honor the seven children who would die of stillbirth while we all stood around in the luxury of art.  

Through these random acts of creativity, I eventually found I could transcend the narrowness of grief and reconnect to the world at large. Not as the same person I was, but as an utterly changed individual.