Object Edit
a dress as portal to memory and meaning - flowing through time & space
Dear friends,
It started with a dress and an idea.
In 2015, I asked:
What if I release this beautiful gown from its box and photograph it?
What if…not much happened and the dress and I decided not to dance, yet?
She returned to her container in the attic until last year, when she asked for some air and I covered her with flowers from our garden.
Timing matters - - A readiness for being in conversation with a thing or idea.
What if the dress became a blank canvas, a place to share the story of the house and garden that nurtured us for more than twenty years? What if?
Every day, it seems, there are choices. Do I wear my hair up or down? Do I let myself feel negative energy, or do I relentlessly seek the light?
Do I store an object in a box, a precious thing signifying the sanctity of a single day in my life?
Or do I let it, and me, out into the air to mix and mingle with the elements, breathing fully the collective energy that is a woman’s life, through time?
The spirits of those whose names are stitched around the hem present themselves. This dress was mine and has become theirs too.
She’s alive, this one, not to be contained.
It seems fitting, somehow, to consider this the day before Halloween, when we give life to and honor those from the past.
Yes, she can pose…
…and dance in the wind…
…but she also knows how to move, from place to place, through time, sensing energy at her aunt’s homes in New Hampshire and Maine.
And as she moves through space and time, she absorbs some energy and lets others go.
Lupines. Yes. And Joe Pye Weed and Rhubarb and buttons for a tree trunk. Yes. Each month, some new twist and turn in her evolution, over time becoming something and someone else entirely.
Is there choice, really, in the flowers embroidered or photographs chosen?
Wind, Air, Water and Light are guides, but is there some force, perhaps, that guides us through the blur of the veil and brings clarity?
This wedding dress chose me and I chose it.1 And now it inspires a memoir in stitches, emerging slowly over time, one edited detail after another.
Of course, the dress can’t contain it all, just as this post can’t contain all my photographs (there are thousands of images of this dress at this point) and our lives will never have enough room for all the hopes and dreams we might have had all those years ago, on that single day, when we first tried each other on.
I am wife. I am mother. I am daughter. I am sister. I am friend.
And I am me - - a photographer who taught herself how to embroider…and do double exposures, exploring layers and composting the all of it.
Over time, large and small choices blur and fade and become something else entirely - - an emotion, perhaps, or memory, and the dress transforms from a single object from a single day to a portal through which memory and meaning emerge.
There is no grand plan, just an unorganized, messy compilation of moments coalescing on a single satin gown. Like my life, a purposeful meandering.
With gratitude for you being you,
Lyn
PS: My next meander begins tomorrow with the Cultivating Place 100 Day Project, where gardens and creativity converge between October 30, 2025 and February 7, 2026. So fun. Stay tuned.
PPS: You may have seen some of these images in previous posts, but I love how they change meaning when in a different narrative.
I had always imagined that I would wear my mother’s wedding dress, the one her sisters and I think other family members wore, including one of my cousins. But the family didn’t want me to alter it, as I have a smaller build. It was sad. So I went on my own to a vintage clothing store in Woodstock, Vermont (it closed a few years ago, but I think it was called “Who’s Sylvia”) and this was the only wedding dress they had - - it was on a mannequin and looked great. I loved all the fabric and when I put it on, it fit perfectly. We did work with a local dressmaker to redo the neckline and lace, though.
And what if you had worn the original family dress— would you have felt free to embroider her?
What beautiful embroidery!🪡