Diaries of an Enlistment
Diaries of an Enlistment describes the frustration, loneliness, devotion, and ambiguity intrinsic to my military marriage during the Iraq/Afghanistan War. My husband is a combat soldier in a special operations unit, which stationed him 800 miles away from our home. This distance and time apart is felt not only when he deploys but during every day of our marriage. During the production of this work, he had been in secluded training schools for months at a time, he deployed to the Middle East, and the last piece addresses his anticipated arrival home in a few days. The series starts with June 2003, when my husband left for the military, and follows a 13-month cycle to June 2004. The collection contains thirteen clay boxes and represents one-month time segments of our relationship.
The lids document the time separated; inscribed on the inside of each lid is the number of hours spent apart each month. Many of the months are spent completely apart; therefore the hours are in the 700’s. Inside each box is filled with handmade objects representing the very different lives that we each lead. All of the items in the box are things that we collected and valued as essential in our daily routines that month; both sets of objects have equal significance even though they evolved from two disparate lifestyles. The diaries also address the ways my husband and I bridged the divide between our parallel daily lives by improvising a language of connection. For example, my husband received hand made books and photographs with letters from me, and he, in turn, sent me objects that he collected and assembled, partially in response to the objects I had sent. Complex, mixed-media forms came to dominate Diaries of an enlistment as the structure of the work reflected our efforts to communicate while in separate worlds, linking two diverse lifestyles in order to sustain the marriage. The diaries trace such communications through the course of our relationship, demonstrating various emotions, the stress of his deployment, the demanding schedules, the desire to be together, and the ever-present space apart.