Memorial Day put me in the mood for flags today, working with a glue stick and some recylable prints. This is a simple collage of two impressions, with dashes drawn in red crayon.
The top left corner is a lithograph on translucent gampi paper. The image is derived from an x-ray of my friend Yolanda's knee. I met Yolanda years ago when she climbed a triple flight of stairs, while using crutches and having a cast on this wounded knee, to get to a party at my house! That girl earned her gin and tonic as well as a medal of honor, in my book.
The blue print, onto which the litho is glued, is a copper etching and dry point of my friend Wendy's father, Douglas. Wendy and I worked together on a book about her mother that centers around texts from a (rather absurd) educational pamphlet detailing social code for wives of Naval officers. In the drawing I have articulated the contours of Doug's uniform with a dotted line; this references sewing patterns and the military mentality.
Actually, I just realized that both Yolanda's and Wendy's dads served in the military. So it's fitting that these two have ended up on the same page.
In the context of my search for visual shorthand in the language of the family tree, this print seems like a trading card that might be fun to have on Memorial Day, even if among strangers. As such it represents the serviceperson(s) in the family - from the decorated career officer to the young guard who never had a chance to earn stripes. Soldiers enjoy a convenient, if oversimplified, role as signifier in the swapable, overlapping stories that we use to illustrate our family ties.
No comments:
Post a Comment