Ode to Charity Ann

In my last post, I mentioned a series of narratives unified through the use of meandering lines. The first of these narratives is that of my fifth great-grandmother, Charity Ann. I've been developing this work through drawings, a two-piece, papier-mache sculpture, plaster casts, and a written narrative. 

Drawings
I started by making several charcoal drawings. My favorite two are posted below and I plan to create a few more as color studies. I was recently inspired by a show of Elio Rodriguez's work that included study drawings. Those drawings helped the viewer see each sculpture differently as well as being beautiful in their own right,

Landscape Form
The papier-mache on the largest of the two forms will be finished today. It will take several days to dry before they can be finished off with color and surface treatment. I've been collecting images of work that I find inspiring in terms of form and surface. While the work dries this week, I will experiment with a set of papier-mache test tiles. In thinking about how I wanted to work with narrative for this series, I looked to artists like Susan Hiller and Gregory Crewdson. I like the ambiguity between fact and fiction in their work. Crewdson's work also contains an otherworldliness that I really respond to. I always look for ways to incorporate my interest in film into my work. A few weeks ago, I had the idea to source color for this series from specific scenes in films that could add narrative and emotive insight into story that I am trying to tell.

Plaster Relics
For each narrative, I plan to make one or more plaster casts of the negative space capturing a gesture made by my own hands. For this work, I've made a couple of maquettes. I'm not entirely convinced that they capture the gesture the way I intended, however creating them gave me a better idea for how to achieve what I'm looking for. If the weather permits the next works in this series will be attempted early this week. 

Narrative
The short narrative that will accompany this work recalls a fictionalized version of an actual event. This memory narrative focuses on the description of a place through the senses. How it will be used is yet to be determined. Posting as wall text, inclusion in a book, and recorded narration are all under consideration.