a sense of place
MudQuilts & mixed media geobiographical explorations
portfolio hang
It was important for me and my ability to move through to the next phase of my explorations to see all of my work hung together. One big realization that I had as I began the semester's work was that it was centered around printmaking. In analyzing the Mud Quilt Project and trying to name the works it dawned on me when I used the word ‘Impressions’ that this project was actually a printmaking process. I am making prints on the landscape using ceramics.
When I examined the digital collages I knew that I was drawn to the layering process and wanted to explore more this link between the layering in the work and the layering of our lives through time and place.
So I’m entering into this next phase fully invested in this idea of exploring and pushing the boundaries of printmaking. I really am drawn to this idea of printing with clay and printing with ceramics - the cross over between the two fields.
Impression 003
Folk Triangle
GeoTag: 35.30493, -80.72969667
This is a photograph of Impression 003 on day 3 along with found object used to create the Impression.
Impression 006
This Impression cannot be geotagged because it is a private property. This is a site I will revisit since the contrast that can be achieved in this soil is so very stark.
Born A Girl in the mountains
One of a series of serigraph experiments using the Born A Girl In the Mountains composition. Monotype, hand painted serigraph screens, clay pigment.
Native soil
This was my first attempt at bringing the idea of a Mud Quilt into an interior space. I was not able to make an impression on the surface without having the clay pull off of my substrate and so began to improvise and play.
The quilt block is called a Bear Paw. Materials include plywood, burlap, clay soil from UNCC, clay soil from my home in Charlotte, clay soil from a friend in Cary, NC, white slip and bone. I do not consider this to be a part of the Mud Quilt series, but it’s own unique geobiographical exploration.
Born a girl in the mountains
beech Creek, NC
digital collage, 2021
This piece is a self portrait of an imagined scene from my childhood. The quilt and shoes I still have in a box and the pants with large cuffs I took from photo references. The army jeep was purchased by my father before I was born because he was convinced that I would be a boy. The faded photograph in the quilt features my great aunt Addie with a large plow horse used to plow the corn fields. She was one of my grandfathers five sisters. She was born with very poor eyesight and wore very thick glasses.
I remember the tilt of her head as she listened, the slight crack and twang of her voice, the strength and dexterity of her arthritic fingers. She was the most cheerful of my aunts - joyful seems the right word. It was aunt Addie who taught me to skip and told me how much she loved to skip when she was a girl - it made long trips to the barn or field quicker and more fun. The weight of being born a girl in Appalachia was much lighter in the 1970s than it was in the 1920s.
Goin’ Vistin’
Dry Creek, NC
digital collage, 2021
Virgie Crisp of Dry Creek, Stecoah Township. Virgie was known for being able to spit further than any man I ever knew and though her hair was silver turned a cartwheel at the drop of a hat.
Sundays were often reserved for visitin’. After church services and dinner were over the older generation (many who were shut ins) would open their doors or sit out on the porch or even drag a bunch of chairs under the shade tree. The younger generation with children and the ramblers would drive up and down the creeks to visit. Sometimes you would pull up and hang yourself out of the truck window and jaw and sometimes you would get out and sit awhile and occasionally you were invited to stay for supper. We visited Virgie and her husband, Bart, many Sundays.
Longing for home
Beech Creek, NC
digital collage, 2021
William Bryson Williams and Evie Roberts Williams expanded the Williams homestead into a large holding on the head of Beech Creek. With little more than a plow, a logging truck and a moonshine still they raised and sent out into the world eleven children most of whom moved to the NC piedmont region to work in the textile mills.
Willie and Evie (Mama and Papa) held the center of their large family together by providing a place for their myriad of grandchildren and great grandchildren to return to during holidays and vacations. The family held together because there was a place to return to.
I have chosen this piece as the seedbed for my Senior Thesis project as it expresses the present germ of my geobiography.