100 Peterson Road
My current body of work, an installation titled 100 Peterson Road, is about the deterioration of my late grandparents’ farm in West Carroll Parish, Louisiana. Moving numerous times throughout my life, between North Louisiana and China, has profoundly affected my view on what home and family ties mean. This has caused me to explore the meaning of native soil and returning home. I found part of what I was seeking in my late Grandparents’ decaying homestead. This work is intended as a full experience of a lifetime of memories on a family farm that is no longer in use. My intent is to have the viewer experience both the property and the emotions I go through when I return to the farm now.
This work utilizes dirt and vegetation in the exhibition space to create a garden of backlit photographs. By planting the images of the home’s exterior in its abandoned and deteriorated state into the soil and vegetation I hope for the viewer to re-evaluate time with consideration to loss. This garden arrangement is paired with old family photos of the land, in its prime, preserved in wax and finally placed in glass jars of water. The use of images dipped in wax as a commentary on both the preservation and interpretation of memory. It is shocking how often a photograph can affect the recollection of a person, place, or event. Often that image or memory is not the way things actually were but the impact. The water functions as a distortion similar to the misrepresentation time often places on the accuracy of our own memories. The creation of the quilt was a way to explore the feelings and comfort of home. I sought to contrast the comforts inherent in a quilt with images of the interior of the home in its neglected condition.
In creating this contemporary tribute I hope to create a form of reverence for both the deceased and for the passage of time, which encroaches in on us everyday often in commonplace ways. I believe most people allow life to move right past them without any regard of what has been lost. My hope is for viewers to reconsider their daily habits with reflection given to time lost. The overall goal of this work is to express how the loss of people can shape the landscape and how the memories of those people are perceived. This work has allowed me to use my visual arts education to reconnect to the shallow roots I have with my mother’s family and deal with the loss of my grandparents Ver Lee and Earl Peterson as well as the abandonment of 100 Peterson Road.