The series An Absent Presence explores the maternal histories of Mount Desert Island, Maine in the 18th to 19th centuries. My seventh great-grandmother, Susanna Beal Milliken, was the first “doctoress” there during that time. I piece together her life, travels, and story together from archival materials- mainly from those that show what the men in her life owned and did. My process includes both traditional and non-traditional quilting, painting, and photography techniques that create landscapes that are punctuated with fact and fiction.