Crimson Laurel Gallery

My current work examines my family’s history through photographs and ephemera both found from outside sources and acquired from my family.

Using this imagery allows me to create my own narrative of a time and place and people that I know very little about. Blending my world, growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s with my grandparents’ world of the 1930’s and 1940’s I can create a nostalgia for something that never really existed.

In an attempt to find my own way back to the Midwest I became interested in the migration patterns of birds, specifically the Canadian Goose as it flies north and south following it’s family during the seasonal changes. This pattern of leaving The South as my grandmother did in the 1930’s to marry my grandfather in Illinois has been reversed as I married my husband and moved to The South a few years ago.

Although the actual birds are absent from this work, a sense of what they have witnessed is present. These pieces combine images from different regions, time periods and families to form a new narrative. Through a combination of my memories and the stories and images of my grandparents’ lives, this work attempts to re-write an old history in order to piece together a new beginning.