Riddle One by Anita Bigelow

$350.00 - Please contact 23 Sandy for current availability.
What am I? Who am I? What answers does my family's history offer? And what is that history exactly? Finding out is ongoing, riddles emerging from riddles, difficult work especially as keeping hidden in plain sight and keeping secrets were part of my family's survival strategies. What wasn't I told? What was I too shy or ignorant to ask? And now, what hints, stories, and names have I forgotten? My heritage is varied Chilean Basque, Russian Jewish, Polish by blood and French by culture its major streams but the family's experience of having to flee France during the Nazi occupation seems key to what we were and what baby boomer American me inherited. Here you will find the beginnings of an exploration of my family's sense of being Other in America and our history of loss. Originally designed as a meander, Riddle One is now presented as a map might be, hinting at the terra incognita of unanswered riddles, the possibility of further attempts to answer them.

Artist Bio

Anita Bigelow, nee Lourie, was a literature major at Reed College and then, ten years later, at Portland State University. Anita originally studied calligraphy with Lloyd Reynolds at Reed. She briefly attended the San Francisco Art Institute as a printmaker and there had the good fortune to take a typography class from Jack Stauffacher. Only recently has she been assiduous in the practice of calligraphy, enjoying classes from Rebecca Wild, Carol DuBosch, and Colleen Cavin, along with as many workshops as possible. More recently she has discovered a love of book binding and the possibility of making artists books, a love discovered in a PSU book arts class taught by Susan Harlan, and furthered in workshops with Tim Ely. In her other, pre-retirement lives, Anita taught in alternative schools, worked in a restaurant kitchen, and was a computer programmer and systems administrator. She also worked as a copywriter and illustrator.