Memories are fragile, fleeting, incomplete, inaccurate. Like this broken glass, memories are held together by delicate threads while other aspects are hazy and indecipherable. Easily broken and sometimes irretrievable, memories become fragmented with time. We seek to fill in the missing pieces with fabricated information, working to keep those fragments together, to keep our memories whole. In an effort to put the pieces back together, maps must be made, so we can know how the remnants fit back together as we go about mending them and filling in the holes. Perhaps the missing pieces are there, simply inaccessible, stored in some other part of the brain with no pathways to connect and make them complete once again.
This is as much about mending memories as it is about mending broken relationships.
Mapping is handmade abaca paper, flax case paper, graphite, silver nitrate stains, and linen thread.
Mending is wet-plate collodion images on fragmented black glass, hand-tinted, and sewn together again with stainless steel & silk thread, and displayed on white oak shelves. They vary in size from 4"x4", 6"x6", 8"x8", and 12" x 12".
Missing is crushed black glass in pipettes on a white oak shelf.
This body of work using family slides was completed in 2012.
Revisiting this idea using found photographs is an ongoing endeavor.
Maps for Mapping are made on handmade cotton/linen paper.
Mending is wet-plate collodion images on fragmented black glass, void of added color, and sewn together again with stainless steel & linen thread, and displayed on walnut shelves. These pieces are 4” x 4”.
Missing in this iteration is simply missing.