Matrilineage and family archeology

Now that I have a blog, I can document a few projects already completed as well as add information on new projects as they comes along. One of the most personally satisfying projects I completed in 2005 was a virtual quilt I made for a Day of the Dead show called "Ofrendas/Offerings."

Since my mother died in November, 2004, I have been traveling back and forth from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh in order to sort out and prepare my parents' house for sale. Yesterday I returned from my seventh recent trip to Pittsburgh -- each trip has lasted for at least a week, during which time I have pulled things out of closets and drawers and sorted what was meaningful from what was meant for the trash. My mother was a hoarder, and while she kept many things of interest, she used no storage system beyond the chronological (kind of like the Bibliotheque Nationale, which archives its holdings by acquisition date!) During this sorting out process, I stumbled on century-old family photographs in the midst of used wrapping paper and therefore have been forced to go through everything in the house item by item, for fear of throwing away irreplaceable treasures simply by not examining the contents of every box and used paper bag stashed in the closets and storage areas.

Getting back to the virtual quilt and my discovery of the photos that led to its creation -- Were they hidden? Stashed away and forgotten? Simply misplaced? The album included a collection of photos taken c. 1920, in and around the farm my grandmother grew up on in western Pennsylvania. Most compelling for me -- there were many pictures of my grandmother, whom I barely remember. (She died when I was three.) I had never been able to form a coherent impression of my grandmother, and these photos allowed me for more or less the first time to get to know her by means of my own powers of observation. Her reputation in the family was one of crankiness, probably due to the fact that she suffered a series of strokes during the years before she died, leaving her with an expressionless face, an impaired range of movement, and a difficult daily existence. The "Nana" I discovered in these pictures had a warm smile, a relaxed and gracious demeanor, and an obvious love for animals and children. I have also sent her photo to Edith Abeyta's blog, imissyouphotos.blogspot.com, which is an art project consisting of a collection of photos of women who are missed.

Text accompanying the installation of "Matrilineage":

This simulated quilt is composed of digitally reproduced family photos and a brightly colored baby quilt made for me by my great-grandmother. Five generations of women in my family are represented in this quilt/offering: my great-grandmother, who made the original quilt, my grandmother, my mother, my daughter, and me.

While cleaning out my mother’s house after her death last November, I discovered two suitcases full of family photo albums and photographs that I had never seen before. A number of the photos include my maternal grandmother, Ella Elizabeth Firestone Brooks, who died when I was two. Creating the “quilt” has provided me with the opportunity to sift through photos, memories and feelings, and has helped me especially to get to know and appreciate my grandmother, whom I barely remember.

Ellie, as she was called, was born at the turn of the twentieth century on a farm in Springfield, Pennsylvania, “up the mountain” on Chestnut Ridge, the last ridge of the Appalachians before they flatten into Ohio. She spent her childhood on the farm, where she worked hard helping her mother. To her deep regret, she was pulled out of school prematurely to care for her baby brother Clarence. Soon after, she married my grandfather Hess Lewis Brooks, who grew up on a neighboring farm. When Hess got a job, they moved to town. They had four children --Raymond, Madeline, Gladys (my mother), and Jack – between 1917 and 1934.

My only personal memory of Nana is of standing next to her at about knee-level, a toddler and a stroke victim learning to climb stairs together. Just a few weeks before she died in 1954 she gave me a puppy, Tiny, for Easter. She thought that I should have a puppy because I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. In many of the photos I found of Nana she is interacting with animals or surrounded by family. She was visibly fond of a horse she cared for as a teenager; cats and dogs were daily companions. Three generations later, my daughter also loves the company of animals. My grandmother became a mother at a very early age and appears to have been delighted by her children as well.

Nana showed a particular radiance and grace in many of the pictures I discovered, often in quite ordinary settings – on Sunday outings with her family, feeding the chickens, doing the laundry. Even after she left the farm, her life was shaped by work – she cooked and kept a meticulously clean house, took in boarders during the Depression, and studied to be a practical nurse during the 1940s. She and my grandfather shared an affectionate and devoted relationship until she died at 54 following a series of strokes.

I also included the following verse from "Ash Wednesday", a poem by T.S. Eliot, which especially resonated for me at the time I made the piece:

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are. . . .”