A Story I Don't Want to Forget
The Theatre of Memory
Last night, the boundaries between then and now simply dissolved. I was sitting in the darkened theater, listening to the local performer Siri Vik sing French chansons—the very melodies that would have scored my parents’ lives in the 1930s and ‘40s.
As I gave myself to the music, the air beside me shifted. My father, Warren, materialized in the seat next to me. He was young, dressed in his uniform, his service cap resting in his lap with a soldier’s quiet discipline. Mickey sat beside him, their hands entwined, her face tilted toward the music with that ecstatic nature I remember so well.
I sat inside the bubble of their great, expansive love—an aura so thick and rich I could almost breathe it in. Though I was invisible to them, I was held by them. I saw my sister Cheryl there, too, but Warren and Mickey were oblivious to the passage of time. They were suspended in a ‘perfect time’—a vie en rose—the singular purity out of which our entire world would eventually expand and grow.
Crying in the dark, I realized I was witnessing the ‘earliest heart’ of my own existence. It was a reminder that the spirit of love is always closer than breathing; nearer than hands and feet.
This profound visitation felt like a confirmation of a talk I gave just a few weeks ago. I stood in the quiet light of The Oblivion Gallery to share the story behind my two current collections, I Dream in Gold and Where Memories Softly Fall. Because my art class at the Maude Kerns Art Center was canceled for the holiday, I finally had the time to sit with the transcript of that talk and realize it was always leading me back to this moment in the theater.
I wanted to share the highlights of that talk with you here—an origin story that begins in the apple orchards of my childhood and ends with the 24K gold on my studio table. It is a journey between two worlds, and I’m so glad you’re walking it with me
The Orchard and the Dream
I want to say that when I was a young girl growing up in the apple orchards on horseback along the Wenatchee River, I lived inside the dream that was my family unit. My father was a World War II vet who turned his government issue gunstock into a camera mount, a soldier remaking himself into an artist.
My mother fell in love with him when she was only 11 and he was 13; they married after the war and raised us four siblings and many more like a pack of wolf puppies who followed wherever they led.
We were a backpacking family exploring the splendors of what would become the North Cascades National Park. In our back yard was the range called The Enchantments.
The older I get, the deeper the mystery of their unshakable, expansive love affair—my father’s clarity, my mother’s ecstatic nature. If my mother met any one of you, within minutes she would have brought you to tears with her heart to heart ecstatic message that “You are divine. Your very nature is love. I see you, and I love you unconditionally”.
Of all my beloved siblings, for much of our mutual life, I was closest to my older sister Cheryl. She was a watercolor artist and teacher who suddenly passed two years ago, which combined with the death of our parents, left me hopelessly lost and increasingly looking to the past for a way to express what our life together had meant.
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The Nest and the Mystery
My earliest memories are of being with my dolls and cat under the green veil of a weeping willow tree. I remember making a nest in a meadow, braiding the grass over my head until I looked out through the layers of leaves. I dug a hole there and buried a tin can I had filled with stones and shells and a skeleton of a mouse I found in an owl’s pellet.
I lived then, as I realize I do now, at the edge of the Great Mystery, Between Two Worlds. I was accompanied by an enormous Giantess who was real in one world and imaginary in the other.
I came to understand while exploring those magical apple orchards that are no more, that I was always in the company of wild animals that loomed large with their vast energies and their knowing eyes. I’ve never stopped living in that world of layered lights and wordless shadows.
The Shamanistic Role of Art
In college I earned my MFA in Poetry with a thesis about the shamanistic role poetry has in connecting the world of the rational with the world of the imaginal. I went on to have a career teaching writing where my Writing 121 classes were called The Hero’s Journey. Although I succeeded at teaching at LCC, the teacher’s life was a difficult one for me, and I gladly retired from it in 2015. I turned, somewhat bruised and battered, to my father’s love of photography and my sister’s love of abstract realism.
After a few years of experimentation I turned back to these images which first formed my earliest heart. My desire then and now is somehow to convey through art how the light of That Other World always finds a way to stream into this one.
I Dream in Gold / Where Memories Softly Fall
I developed a technique of printing on transparency Lumina Film then coating the back with 24 Karat gold. The result is a soft golden glow that reminds us that the spirit of love is always as I said earlier, “closer than breathing; nearer than hands and feet.” The pieces I call I Dream in Gold are for my gold and silver leaf work.
On the other side of the Oblivion Gallery (and my brain!) is my effort to explain what I feel when the spirit leaves this world and crosses over the Great River to That Other World. I call this collection “Where Memories Softly Fall,” and these are primarily printed on a beautiful watercolor paper then cold waxed by hand to create a rich, old world surface where the light can come in.
The genesis of "Where Memory Softly Falls" emerged in the late autumn of 2023, during a breathtaking drive down the Columbia River Gorge with my younger sister Toren on a radiant autumn evening, just days after our final visit with our sister Cheryl, who would soon depart from us. The vibrant landscape mirrored the raw, unresolved emotions of impending loss, becoming the visual echo of a profound personal transition.
This series explores the experience of grasping at slipping memories and the shock of absence when a beloved sibling, deeply connected to the Great Mystery of art and the wild, moves between worlds. In these dreamlike compositions, I feel her spirit ascend even as her journey ends and a new one begins for those of us left behind.
Through composite photographs—layering images to reflect fragmented memories and evolving perspectives—I recreate the brilliant abundance of nature, often incorporating symbolic figures and elements. These pieces evoke the veil between living and departed realms, exploring themes of spirit and lingering presence. "Where Memory Softly Falls" is an evolving series, a contemplative journey shaped by the ebb and flow of dream and memory.
Video: “A Story I Don’t Want to Forget”
I would love to hear from you in the comments—is there a specific 'image of your earliest heart' that still guides your life today?
P.S. If you’d like to hear the music and poetry that grew from these memories, you can find my new tracks on Bandcamp here: Music/Sandy Brown Jensen
Sandy, I always enjoy your Substack posts, and of course this one that includes memories of your parents' loving marriage and your sister are especially meaningful. The picture of lupine on Burch Mountain also has deep meaning for me. When Susan lived on the foot of that mountain, we took many hikes there. And Barry lives just on the other side of it! Finally, your art and your creative process are of great interest to me, as I follow your multi-talented career. I admire how you have blossomed in so many directions in your "retired" years!