Yesterday, I received a great gift from my parents — old family photographs and 2 “photos” of my father’s heart — one before the stint, one after. I am currently putting together a series of collages about my family. I think sometimes when you’re the furthest one away in your family, even if you;re not that far, it intensifies one’s loneliness in the world really. I sit here now, typing this, the glue still fresh on my fingertips for creating my version of my grandfather Mc., I sit here hours away from family and even many friends …
I am happy now … happier than I have been in a long time … but that longing for that blood / DNA / one’s penchant for some obscure family trait still seems unreachable. These collages as well as my series of genealogical poems, Ohio Lonely (which was to originally be a collection of poems about children’s author, Dare Wright but took on something else altogether) make sense of connections, disconnections, estrangement, loneliness, and genetic disease. At least this is my hope.
This series will be in an art show at the Library where I work this fall. My website will give the details of it as September draws near.
This collage speaks to my young memories of my grandfather … the first things I thought of … in this he “borrows” his son’s heart x-ray and sharing the space are the three things that occupied him heart and mind as I remember … Connie Frances, cigarettes, and his wife (my grandmother), Lillian Foley.
All really so hard to get …
But there is more that was so hard to get … hence “grandfather no. 2.”
