Artist Statement

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 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 am 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 repeated as I married my husband and moved to The South a few years ago.

This work is also influenced by ideas of labeling, branding and tagging. Killing a banded goose while hunting is an honor and the bands are collected as trophies. Just as our family photographs and ephemera, these tags and bands are a historical document of the bird’s life, it’s travels and it’s age.