Artist Statement about my MFA Fibers Thesis Show. See the PORTFOLIO section to see images of this work.
“Trace of Memory”
The moment I inherited Maw Maw Keck’s old photographs they have mesmerized me. Staring at them, looking for evidence or clues that tell more about the family history, makes me want to learn about their lives and understand them as individuals. An unexplained connection to their memories is felt.
These photos are not evidence of anything at all. They are only the trace of the memories left behind. The photos only tell what the moments looked like. It is not even known for sure who took the photographs. The only thing seen is what the photographers saw in the limited viewfinder of a camera lens.
I immerse myself in these memories that belong to others by tracing them on fabric with stitches. To feel closer to the family, I also stitch myself into the composition. In hopes to discover a new viewpoint of their experience, disappointment is realized when the only discovered perspective is my own.
Two mono-prints are created at the same time by placing the stitched fabric between two pieces of paper. Each print created from the final stitching mimics how people come away with multiple views of the same experience. This transformation from photograph to stitching, and finally the print on paper, expresses the deterioration of the memory and the fading of these details over time. The imprint of the ink on the paper is the memory of the stitching; thus, it is the trace of a memory.
Artist Statement about making collages out of family photographs:
“Truth or Fiction?”
Several years ago, I inherited a part of my grandmother’s collection of photographs. It is a wonderful collection that gives me clues to what my family was like before I was born. I recognize a lot of the family members in the photos, but many of the faces are unfamiliar. My grandmother, the last survivor on my father’s side family, was the only person who knew this history, so I am left with this collection and nobody to tell me the stories that go with them. There are a few clues on the back of some of the photos, but mostly only names and dates. It is left up to me to fill in the blanks with these truths; create my own story and history.
Photographs at one time were considered to be evidence of truth. They became documents of the way things were, and an intimate peek into the details of someone’s life. Since most family photos seemingly chronicle happier moments, these documents only reveal half-truths. It is this dichotomy of truth and fiction that I am interested in. Looking deeper at the evidence, I realized that a photograph is only one person’s perspective. What about the people in the photo? Did they have the same experience? Looking at the collection as a whole, would I say that I came from a happy family? Probably, but is this the truth? Or is it fiction?
In my artwork, I am interested in revealing this absurdity of thinking a photograph is proof of something real. I play with this edge of reality by creating new stories with my family photos. This new evidence has become my proof that there is always a flip side to a story. We all want to come from perfect families, but this is not the truth, even if you have the photos to prove it. Because we do not have a choice of where we come from, I have also decided to bring this element of chance into the process of making a collage. I randomly pick two photos and force them together in a composition, very much in the same way that we are thrown into a family. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it does not.
I edit these photo collages and give them new attention by recreating them with recycled fabrics and linens. These materials bring with them their own stories and histories. I take these fictions further by manipulating the collages with graphic software creating different color layers of the same image printed out on fabrics. These stacked fabrics are sewn together and cut back revealing each version of the photo mimicking the how each member of a family may tell a completely different story about the same experience.
