The Anatomy of My Heart

As a craft artist and maker I love process. I love handling different materials and merging them together in unlikely pairings or compositions. One of my favourite material categories to work with is found objects, of which I have many boxes worth labeled and tucked away in my art supply closet. When I need the perfect stone, feather, piece of bark or bone, coupled with random bits of vintage wallpaper or photographs I can go to my collection of found objects and know I will find just the right thing.

The making of a series of works I've entitled, 'The Anatomy of My Heart' started out just this way. The spark that ignited a group of works that spans over twenty years of my art practice was a mysterious old family photograph. Apparently, it was of two people - a set of great great grandparents - that I am descended from but no one had any living memory of.

How could it be that nor my parents or grandparents knew nothing of our lineage from only three generations previous to me? A sadness overcame me as I peered into that image and realized how utterly lost our family story had become. It's a common story shared by many in North America. Due to political conflict in my ancestral homeland coupled with personal challenges such as poverty and lack of opportunities relatives chose to leave and work abroad in horrid and oppressed conditions for the chance of a better life. At first there was the plan to return but further political unrest forced the family to choose a different path and eventually the whole family would migrate to Canada.

The fact that I was looking at that photograph and knew nothing of those in it was a direct consequence of that decision and surrounding circumstances. What happens to an identity; a lineage with the rupture of migration? What is lost in translation when different generations of a family speak different languages? How do things like family recipes or the quirky stories of your parents as kids get passed along when you can't communicate with your grandparents? I wondered all these things.

The hardest part was knowing that there weren't any easy answers to my questions. There wasn't a family record I could look up in some kind of local archive. The relatives that I could ask questions of didn't want to answer them with more than a shrug or very truncated answer. So, as a way to process my grief of not knowing and lostness I did what I do best. I started making things.

It started with this one photograph but many more have been discovered and used over the years. Never disturbing or altering the original photograph images are duplicated and altered before their inclusion in the works. They used to be photocopied, but now I can scan them and print them out at home in varying sizes and distortions. These images become the centrepiece for my dioramas or mixed media assemblages. I print them on paper, mylar, fabric, plastic sheet and sometimes even metal. They are framed with materials that are place specific to where I live and juxtapose them with materials that I associate with my family's homeland such as bamboo or jade. I'm a jeweller by trade so there are often hidden jewellery objects in the assemblages too.

What started out as a personal response to a mysterious family photograph turned into a many years of inspired hours of making in my studio and a collection of over twenty works that is ongoing. There have been amazing side effects of this creative activity. Stories started emerging from my father, and other family members once they saw these artworks that simply asking them questions did not warrant. Secondly was the curiosity of other family members about our collective histories and stories. Now there is a dialogue happening that did not exist before.

For me the creation process of these particular works has been somewhat cathartic. There is a potentcy in them that has allowed me to come to a deep understanding of where I’ve come from which has been a truly transformative process. An unfolding of good relations with my father, in particular, is a most cherished impact of doing this work.

Through a more public lens this series has become a compelling body of art works that has now garnered the attention of curators of public collections in Canada and sparked many conversations about other people's parallel experiences, wonderings and family stories. Though this work is based on a very personal narrative, it has become clear that it speaks to a shared experience culturally. We all have a story and we are all a part of a larger story.