All Souls

All Souls’ Day
Aladar Korosfoi-Kriesch

I found out yesterday that my upcoming show at Sanctuary Tattoo will be in November rather than September, and I am so pleased! My cousin Jon, who will be showing his photographs of family gravestones along with my drawings of our ancestors, pointed out that our exhibit opening will coincide with The Day of the Dead, or All Souls' Day, which is PERFECT considering our subject matter!!

(I'm also thrilled with the new date because it gives me more time to prepare! (:^D)

Ghosts and Graves

My maternal grandmother, Lillie Congdon (little one in the center) with some of her family. (Check out that lighthouse painted in the background!!! I must draw that...)
Lillie was born in 1896. That's her grandmother on her right, her mother in the upper left, and her sister Edna in the front. Edna died at age 17. My Mom is named after her...

Lillie ready to take a dip in front of her old beach house at Point Judith, RI. I could use a swimsuit like that...

Some of my cousin Jon's family grave photos...

My great-grandfathers ~ Lillie's father-in-law (left) and father (right), with her first born, my Aunt Carolyn.

My charcoal is waiting impatiently for me to grab it and get going on more portraits of these marvelous old faces...

My cousin Jon is going to be showing his grave photos along with my portraits. We are thinking of cool ways to do this...

Here are some of my ideas:

What if they were B&W prints?

And/or printed on drawing paper, so they look soft and charcoaly?

What if they were printed and then cut out and collaged on lightweight boards, to look like actual stones?

Or...

(Now I'm getting wacky, but what the heck...)

What if they had frames made of live grassy loam?

Or what if we placed the photos in a plot of grassy loam??

With the geraniums and the little flags...

Or maybe some more pertinent objects, objects from their lives...

Just doing some out in left field thinking...

Join in if you like!!

...and Jon's band might come up and play at the opening!

Jon said maybe they can play some Grateful Dead tunes!

Hee hee!!!!!

MES

Started this portrait on Saturday - this is my father's mother, Mary Elizabeth Simmons. I am Martha Elizabeth, and until I was twenty one, we had the same last name, and the same initials. (What a MES! :^)

She died when I was five years old, so I have just a few memories of this grandmother. My father always said that I resembled her. Yup. The same face shape, the same nose! I have to keep working this - I've made her face too long and I've made her look more severe than she is - she has a very soft and gentle expression. I will find her as I push that charcoal around!

I want to thank those of you who gave me feedback for my *ghost* project! And I want to share this bit of synchronicity:

Directly after I corresponded with my cousin Jon about our collaboration and about my plan to print my portraits on sheer fabric and make them hang like ghosts, I responded to a friend's inquiry on Facebook about the upcoming Ebune Parade in Portland. She had asked me if I'd ever been in the parade, and I told her yes, that I had participated in 2005, when one of my MECA professors, Alex Kahn, was in charge. I sent her a link to Alex and his partner Sophia Micheles's website, knowing that she would love to see their work. They do pageant puppetry, and my friend does paintings of puppets. While finding that link for her, I happened to notice that Alex and Sophia had a video on Youtube, and curious, I clicked to view...

Ghosts with portrait faces!!!
Wow, I just love the floating chairs, tea cups, silverware, etc!
Pure Magic.

Alex and Sophia now travel the globe working with communities to create wondrous puppets and pageants!

Great Grandmother Godfrey

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!