Created 1991 Acquired 1991

"Carved skull & bones on flag-covered swastika, with text"

Created 1988-91:
"I made the skull first & it was kicking around for several years..."

[From Judy's talk "What One Psychoanalyst Learned From Contemporary Art" q.v.]
This piece, entitled "Father", is by Mark Heresy, who "woke up" as a child to discover that his father had been a member of Hitler Youth at the end of World War II. Mark's father had transferred the fascistic, controlling patterns of that experience onto the fabric of his new life in the United States. This representation of fascination and horror, of repudiation and attachment is a "big print" version of the problem of self-delineation that we all face but which the actual facts of our individual histories can make unresolvable and extremely difficult to bear. I use this piece to remind myself continuously of the necessity to look at all of it, and not to leave out any of the hard parts.

The hand-carved and polished wooden skull is an echo of how as a child Heresy was obsessively made to polish all the woodwork in his house. And, yes, it is a real and important flag with family history.

"Exh:Laguna Art Museum, 1998-9, 'Life Lessons; ...'"

Mark Heresy