Emily Babette

I am writing this post as I am going into my third week of quarantine due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which is sweeping the planet. It feels like a very appropriate time to sit down and share some thoughts and meditations on home.. from home. I have an on going body of work where I explore the concept of home and domestic spaces from a feminist point of view. Additionally, my point of view has been developed from my peripatetic childhood, as I spent my formative years nomadically moving with my family between Canada, Australia, and the US. Typically we would dwell in a place for no longer than one year, and often far less. In 2018 I became a naturalized citizen of the United States, after living in this country for eighteen years under the status of "legal alien." This shift in the legality of my  permission  to dwell here, permanently and as a bonafide citizen with full rights, led me to ask the questions: "Is the United States now my home?"...

As I am getting older the concept of time is becoming a more frequent subject in my thoughts than ever before. Summer has been slow to announce it's self this year in Southern California, taking it's time to increase it's intensity incrementally, degree by subtle degree. Alas, I do feel that it is finally upon us at last... and we are in for the long and lethargic drudge through the blistering summer months.  There is something so very nostalgic about the summertime for me. When I was a child in Canada, Australia or Connecticut summers were synonymous with holidays, freedom from school, and long lazy afternoons pleasurably spent wasting time . My, how times have changed... I do believe it is the predicament of the creative person to feel as it there is never enough hours in the day and never enough production happening within those hours to be satisfied. Unlike the long dreamy summers of my childhood, where a day spent rearranging all the books on my bookshelf alph...