Four: Reflecting on the January 2017 Residency

Roots & Remains

Yesterday, I completed the 1st draft of a new audio piece. A question that I've struggled with this semester is how to incorporate my research and artistic process more into the finished work. 

In this piece, I wrote narrative describing my trip to Harris County in search of my ancestral home, Negro Heel, and Isaiah Parker Jr.'s grave. I combined it with a nature recording of my childhood home and recitation of and repeated excerpts from Alice Walker's poem, Turning Madness into Flowers. I'm currently exploring ideas for turning the piece into a video installation and will discuss this further as it develops.

The Taste of Memories

This is an in progress draft of a new video piece I've been working on. The audio is from an interview I conducted with my mom over the summer. The video features footage of a stream and wooded area near my home with superimposed photographs of family members mentioned during the narration. My intention is to make a two channel video installation to be projected simultaneously. Like the Water Secrets installation, this video visually merges nature and body, while also raising questions about the importance of food, family relationships, the home and its surrounding landscape to who we become.

Lists & Inventories

Ever since visiting Harris County over the summer, I've been haunted by the probate records of my slave owning 5th great grandfather. I find the inventory and subsequent sale records of his belongings fascinating.

Over the past weeks, I've been working on transcribing the inventory. It was not as easy as I had hoped. Old styles of penmanship, farm equipment jargon, and misspellings made the transcription slow and frustrating. Currently, I have a draft that I find satisfactory, with only two words that I have not been able to figure out.

According to my research on Georgia standards of agricultural wealth, Isaiah would have been considered in the elite class of farmers called planters. This means he was reasonably wealthy. At the time of his death in 1961, his entire estate was appraised at $35,340 and included about 900 acres of land and 23 slaves.

This inventory is extraordinary because it lists each slave by name and monetary value, along with farm animals, equipment, and household items as mundane as wash kettles and lard. One of the questions this document raised for me was what factors determine a slave's value? The obvious answer to that question was work potential, but I also found that reproductive potential and life expectancy were also significant factors.

When comparing this inventory to the slave schedules that accompanied the US census taken the year before, I learned several things. The first thing that I noticed was the number of children; over half of the slaves were under the age of 16. The second fact that the women of childbearing age and had at least one child were more valuable than those who do not have children. After crosschecking both documents with the 1870 census (which listed African American people on the regular schedules which included names and ages) I was able to match Charity Ann and several of her children (Henry, Julius, Hiram and possibly Virginia).

Another question this document raised is what would an inventory of my possessions look like when compared to Isaiah's? I have started working on taking a complete inventory of my workspace as a result of these ponderings. This inventory might grow into a larger project, where I attempt to record all of my possessions but I want to set a limit for the time being.

Although not a question, the fact that this is the first official document listing my 4th great grandmother, Charity Ann (and several of her children) by name it seems almost like a genesis of sorts. Something that laid the foundation for everything that came after. It provides personal context for my family and their eventual migration to Muscogee County and beyond as well as cultural context for issues of power and valuation. How much was a black life worth in 1861 and how does that contrast with now?

I'm working on an audio project in response to this list. By overlapping one channel with a list of slave names with another channel listing animals, objects and property, I seek to emphasize the contrasts between the two while also pointing out the fact that they appear on the same list.

Objects, Labor, & Identity: Mom

It's interesting to see how the narrative created by my mom's portraits overlap with grandma's, yet tell a completely different story.

Objects, Labor, & Identity: Grandma

Although this photo series differs a bit from work that I have made in the past there is one theme that is ever-present, references to the sense of touch. Working loosely with narrative, I tried to capture candid (with one exception) images that tell a biography of sorts. I also draw connections with line metaphor I've been working with and the visual theme of capturing and archiving gestures. I've chosen to desaturate the colors to unify the images and reference a not so distant past. This is a work in progress. I plan to incorporate sound and objects to expand the narrative.

Stories in the Details: Grandma's House

While at my grandmother's house, I collected more images from her backyard. As with my mom's yard I focused on details that tell a story of place and time. However, unlike mom's house, I have a long history and deep connection to this place. There, each detail felt like a window into my parent's personalities and everyday life. Here, each detail also reveals something about my grandmother's lifestyle, but it is also steeped in memory, loss, personal history, and change. 

More Stories in the Details from Mom's House

Whether tending their garden, planting and maintaining their planting beds, or just taking their morning coffee on the deck, both of my parents spend a lot of time outdoors. Their yard is almost like a portrait of their lives. In it, one can discern their love of nature, evidence of a strong work ethic, a predilection for spending time together, and a fondness for keeping aquariums and collecting angels, among other things. One can also find mysteries and curiosities in the same place. This leads me to consider the significance of these details. They are fragments. Each with its own story that when assembled together tells an entirely different one. A story of people, place, home and the reciprocal relationship between woman/man and nature.

Objects, Labor, & Identity: Mom and her Cross-stitching

I see this photo series as a continuation of the object series I started last semester where I cast the negative space created by specific gestures to create organic, shell-like objects. My mom has always been creative. When I was young, she ran a home-based sewing business. Some of my earliest memories are of watching her work or going fabric shopping with her. Although she has taken up cross-stitching recently, observing her creative process feels like a memory that has come full circle. This series also picks up the branching line visual motif that I started using last semester.