In her 17 years as a visual artist, Mickalene Thomas has created 15 paintings and 153 photographs of her mother and muse, Sandra Bush (aka "Mama Bush").
On Friday, she'll introduce a documentary portrait of her mother—"Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman"—as part of a new solo show of her work at the Brooklyn Museum.
In making the 30-minute film, the Brooklyn-based artist asked her mother, a former fashion model, 53 questions. Which answer was most surprising?
"The one about selling drugs," Ms. Thomas said. "I asked her, 'Did she have any regrets?' And that's when she told me. I was unaware that she'd taken part in that."
When we looked over the numbers Ms. Thomas assembled about her project, we were curious about the 60 minutes of chanting Ms. Bush does each day.
"It's not about seeking outside but looking within," Ms. Thomas said. "It's a determination to have perseverance to get through any obstacle. It's a way of centering an individual, to ground them in the spiritual universe."
These days, her mother's biggest obstacle is her deteriorating health. It became both a subject of the documentary and a scheduling determinant while filming: "It really was a day-to-day thing, if we could shoot that day, or if we had to wait."
Will Ms. Bush be well enough to attend her daughter's opening at the Brooklyn Museum?