Nana's Story

Nana’s Story is a set of cyanotype images printed on fabric with needlepoint text. The images are appropriated from my grandmother’s photo albums and are purposefully selected due to their iconic photographic nature, both familiar and ambiguous. Text stitched into the imagery reads as “spoken word”, they are interpretive stories told to me as a child by my grandmother of her past life. The stitched words are reminiscent of sewing projects, such as Quilting and Cross Stitch Samplers – a learning tool for American schoolgirl art. The work reveals a narrative that is both true and perceptual, an invented historical interpretation selected and hidden from me. It blurs the line between factual memory and constructive memory.

This work is a residue of the process of self - discovery and exists as a visual diary – an internal narrative. It attempts to define roles that I play as granddaughter, daughter, woman and wife and most importantly, archivist of my family history. The work is a quasi- autobiographical story defined by life’s cycle and a search for that which makes us human.