Waiting a performance/action by Sally Hudak and Thaddeus Root

Waiting

a performance / action 

Sally Hudak / Thaddeus Root

July 1995

My life at this time was about waiting.  I knew what the outcome would be, my mother was dying.  Of course we just didn’t know when.  It was a process. This piece was an expression of that process.

It was a warm, summer afternoon.  Maybe nine people were in the gallery.  No one had a camera.  I waited, lying, curled up on my side, on the floor.  Thaddeus came in the front door and began to place 5” candles on the floor in a line which moved towards me.  Each time he placed a candle he lit it with a match.  The line of burning candles moved closer to me until it encircled my curled up figure closely enough to burn a hole in my cotton skirt.  I waited, I did not move until the last candle burned out.  It took about an hour.  Some of the candles actually burned down right to the floor and scarred the wood.  Jean has since refinished the floor a few times but some of the marks are still there.

Sally Hudak