Altar of Remembrance (The Saints We Make Ourselves)

A pocket altar dedicated to my grandparents, who were Catholic, and who have long since passed. Their photograph has faded, their figures outlined in gold, held in place like small, ordinary saints. The cyanotype blue, echoing the ultramarine of Renaissance frescoes, slips the piece into that space between the earthly and the divine.

At the top sits a Sacred Heart, embroidered in cotton thread and trimmed with crocheted tinsel. In its center is a cross that once belonged to my great-grandmother, later given to me by my grandfather, passed down by hands that knew each other. At the bottom, a sprig of rosemary, stitched in thread; rosemary has always been a plant for remembering the dead.

In the middle of it all is a cyanotype print of The Prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a prayer about surrender, trust, and the hope that love outlives us. Here, it becomes a quiet thread between the living and the gone.

The pocket altar becomes a small, held moment, a pause, a return, a way of reaching back toward the people who shaped me, even after they’ve gone.