The latest in my Mything Persons series (this is a working title...).
I started this drawing of my great grandmother Godfrey yesterday - my mother's paternal grandmother. Hmmmmmm, she looks a bit like Elmira Gulch...
My cousin Jon Simmons has been taking pictures of our ancestors' gravestones for the past few years, and has been doing alot of research about the family. I asked him yesterday if he would like to collaborate with me for my show in September. He could show his photos, and I could show my portraits. I think, though, that my portraits are going to be a springboard for something else. I mean, they are fine as drawings, but I want to transform them into another medium. I want to make an installation of Jon's gravestone photos possibly as big Iris prints, or maybe projections? With my portraits maybe digitally printed on sheer fabric and made into wispy ghosts of sorts...
The ghosts could float from the ceiling, along with objects from their lives, perhaps. People in my family have stories and remember bits and pieces about those who've passed: a great aunt who had the first mastectomy in RI, and one who loved to serve tea; a great uncle who hunted rabbits; a grandmother with TB. (There, I've made a poem.) But if I could take some of the objects that usually pack my portraits OUT of the picture plane, and have them floating in the air somehow, along with the ghosts of my ancestors...people and objects that have gone the way of all things, to use one of my mother's great expressions. (Hmmm, could be another title possibilty...)
I have just started hatching this plan...if you have any ideas about this, throw them my way! I could use a studio visit about now!
