I was born the daughter of a Russian diplomat, Dimitre Pavlik. I say this because the tale alleviates the boredom of the truth. I abhor domesticity and all other things banal. It is the bane of my existence and I am constantly imagining myself elsewhere. And yet, and yet … it is the stuff and quintessential fortitude of my art. “Erna,” I say to myself, “you are cruising the border of the secular and the sacred, creating narratives in the mundane to fill a homely space. There is, in your work dear, a sense of collection of the seemingly inane and disparate, objects linked together by their origins as secular matter and subjected to the same treatment (that is, all acts of the familial; stitch, crochet, knit, sew, arrange and quietly pack away) thus less elevating them as art is want to do but more alleviating them.” I was born the daughter of a Russian diplomat, Dimitre Pavlik. Heiress to a small and unnamed fortune, mistress to the unknown I will die.