Our family histories are constructed of memories and personal artifacts woven into a quilt of understanding, unique to each and every one of us. Even though my sister and I share all respective relations, even we don’t see our heritage the same. Perhaps our Grandmother told her stories of her youth in Denmark that I was not privy to. Maybe my sister never learned how salmon used to congregate by the thousands in the Tuolomne River where my Grandfather would catch them each spring. Stories get passed along the family lines and so often are lacking in the unsavory and embellishing of the glorious.

   My mother is the only child of immigrant parents, both of whom have now passed on. My father is the only surviving child of parents whose previous three generations each took a leg of the cross continental journey after emigrating from Sweden. My distant family ties have been severed. What I know of past generations has been lost to time, relocation, and fading memories.

   The genesis of this series is an old box of family photos and correspondence my father presented to me two years ago. Who are the people in these photographs? Who wrote these letters? Are we related? I don’t know for sure. At times they look more like my neighbors, or people I’ve seen in newspapers or meet on the street.

    These constructions are tangible meditations on those thoughts. They weave together aesthetic swatches of what I believe, or would like to believe, my history to be. Photographs are threaded together with antiquated messages, patched with bits of paper, and designed by intuition. Like most of human history, what they reflect is a piecemeal understanding of my own heritage.

 There are 26 pieces in this series
All works are mixed media and collage on rag board
Sizes range from 4” x 10” to 20” x 28”.