Glitch Mommy: Forty Days and Forty Nights
A fairy tale loosely based on The Modern Mother Goose by Helen Hamilton, 1916
Glitch Mommy: Forty Days and Forty Nights follows the fragments of adoption disruption into a world of fairy tale where little lost beings are conjured from a difficult period, and lyrical gestures of staining and fluid mark-making bring about the discovery of fantastical landscapes that tilt the field towards a new epoch.
Using source material from the baby closet of collected items while waiting in the adoption pool and items from her own family archives, Koehler uses photographic images layered with paint, ink, and other mixed media to create a personal language of symbols and motifs constructing a new narrative of origin, mother, and matriarch.
Koehler employs Helen Hamilton’s prologue from “The Modern Mother Goose: A Play in Three Acts” as springboard and introduction to her work, Glitch Mommy: Forty Days and Forty Nights. It is here in Hamilton’s Gooseland that Koehler explores the ideas of the idyllic golden age of motherhood and the transformation that happens whilst we wait.
“In Gooseland, she lived, — a queer country close by the sea, — where wishes were horses, and beggars might ride; — where every Jack had his Jill, and where — most marvelous of all — every day a wonderful goose laid a wonderful golden egg… That was during the Golden Age in Gooseland; — for up to that time no one had ever heard of witches, or goblins, nor of the Terrible Giant who lived in the land where the beanstalk grew.
So in Gooseland every one was happy. Pearl necklaces hung up on trees, and the children played without fear.
But one day, when Mistress Mary was giving a party in her beautiful garden upon the moon, the Giant came and stole away the children, and locked them up in his dungeon; and all the people of Gooseland,–the Queen of Hearts, and Humpty Dumpty, and Simple Simon,–even the four and twenty Blackbirds,–all joined in the search for the lost children.”
