I remember my Mom always wearing a blue polkadot dress when I was a kid. A couple years ago I found out that it was the only dress she had for many years and that she made it herself to save money as we were going through difficult times financially. She said that she sometimes was embarrassed that she wore the same dress all the time when all the other ladies had new ones. But she said that she did it so that my seven siblings and I could take music lessons and play sports etc.

I recently made this woodblock/screen print as a self portrait/Christmas present for my mother. It doesn’t look like much, but there is a lot of meaning to me personally behind it. The portrait is not actually of me, but of Jesus, modeled by my son when he was a few days old. He has been swaddled in blue polkadots.

First of all, I consider it a self portrait because I feel that my son looks a lot like me when I was a baby, but more importantly, he is in many ways an imprint of the things he learns from me directly and indirectly. The reason I call this “A Covering” is because, in my Mormon faith, I believe that Christ has provided a figurative covering for me and my weaknesses/sins/heartaches/sicknesses. But Mary, the mother of Christ was a savior to Christ, as well as all who believe in him. Hence, she has provided a literal and figurative covering for him by wrapping him in a covering of swaddling clothes. So, in a very literal sense, Mary is a savior to all of us because she gave birth to Christ. In the same way, all mothers are saviors to their children because they gave birth to them, including my wife to my son, and my mother to me. The reason my son is swaddled in blue polkadots is because they represent the sacrifices my mother made by giving birth to me and all the sacrifices she made for me growing up.