When Elizabeth first died, it was like having the rug pulled out from underneath us. Thrown for such a loss, among many griefs I remembered my wife’s lament over what would she feared would happen to her artworks in the aftermath of her passing. She imagined they would be thrown out. I guess she imagined at that indeterminate time I would not be here any longer either. I resolved, that, at least, was one thing I could take care of. I was thinking of having Liz’s friends vouch for taking her work after I was gone. I voiced this concern to my friend Peter Arcese, a literati and attorney who was helping me, and after a time he remembered POBA, probably having dealt with art legacies with other estates.
Working on presenting my wife’s work on POBA brought me closer to my wife’s creative spirit, and enabled me to forward her work into consciousness, as the Tibetan word “powa” indicates. She had been stymied by health conditions from pushing her creative agenda in the last few years, and accomplishing the publication of her work on this site might have satisfied, one might imagine, a left over urge in her spirit, as well as my own. I always saw her as victorious, with power, throughout all of her obstacles due to her shining spirit, and as I and she over time melded together (we called it the A-team), it felt so good to advance her work, (work which was worthy and I’ve always loved as a true expression of her spirit), with pride into the world, and something, I feel sure, she would have wished for as well.
It was a joy to comb over the works she left behind, and cloak myself in her creative spirit, and with Orpheus-like yearning bring her back from the underworld into the light of day again, in a very real sense. For what are any of us but consciousness, and the artist is fortunate to be able to leave traces of that consciousness like living embers still aglow.
Perhaps then, death need not be a barrier to empowering the consciousness of our loved ones. POBA serves a very valuable function in that regard.
– Bernard Kramer, Presenter and loving spouse of Elizabeth Fairgrieve