Project Statement

Mother’s Daughter, a handmade artist book, is the prelude to Episodes and Stills of Play, short stop-motion films and a series of constructed photographs, where I began the process of examining generational curses causes to rationalize my being. In it, I investigate my personal art history and the direct influence of being the daughter of an artist. Through images such as Stop at the Fairy Tree and Handmade Heirlooms, which are constructed self-portraits that consider the individual scale and weight of physical and symbolic objects that are generationally linked to my being. My mom became my collaborator, subject, and partner: we collaboratively recreated portraits she made of me, and I made new ones of her. We soon learned that a home she grew up in, the five-generation Simpson-Heap family farmhouse, would be demolished. My late maternal Grandfather was a self-employed farmer and truck driver, and an elder and founding member of a Christian church in central Illinois. We made the 106-mile journey which felt like a faith-based journey to find forgiveness. Through material collection and anti-blueprint cyanotypes, this project becomes tangible, and allows for dialogue between past and present. And then came the dream house…