Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Even more powerful is the fear that the feelings of the past are ones that, like the past, can never truly be revisited. These memories can feel like home, but what if it's a home you can never return to? What if your real home begins to feel empty, abandoned by the times that you, maybe, didn't appreciate enough as they were happening?
In case it's not obvious, Miss Those Nights was created almost a year into the pandemic. With on-and-off lockdowns, a vaccine still several months off, and a year that I had hoped would be one of my best having already scraped by me in a slow, painful way, this mixed media collage was used as a way to create something new out of old feelings and old memories; something erratic and messy, but beautiful, energetic, and overall, a happy - if bittersweet - reflection on the nights spent out in the world with the people I love. Those moments away from my house that nevertheless became more like my home, and a hope for the time when those nights would return, and we could once again meet at the park, or the riverbank, or anywhere, really.