What can explain the hardships we face?

We often pass blame to our parents and grandparents gone before us.

We imagine our grandparents setting us up for failures or fortunes with the decisions they made in the early 20^th century. But a larger and older story is offered in the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, a far deeper source, much further back in our collective family tree; Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden, the curse they placed us under, and their expulsion from that paradise.   The series explores then how these two contrasting ideas would play out visually.

Another element was added as I studied curses or bad luck in folk and popular accounts, the notion of curses as shown through the lens of the African American Hoo Doo or Conjure tradition. Anthropologists describe Hoo Doo as a “sympathetic system of magic,” in which objects or actions represent reality in symbolic ways.  Running water can symbolize a river or drowning; a cross can represent crossroads and therefore decision-making.  It is a very rich palette for an assemblage artist to draw from, the use of odd numbers of objects, the botanical and zoological elements, the spices, charms, and small objects echo Hoo Doo “rootwork” but reflect imagery from Old Testament passages. Hoo Doo’s origin among slaves in America was itself an attempt to mitigate a harsh world, powerless and ineffectual as the fig leaves that were humanity’s first attempt to deal with their nakedness in the Genesis account.

Acknowledging that our attempts to alleviate the big problems and pressures in our lives often are ineffectual at best, and ruinous at worst, led to the second part of the series. Exploring the generations in the Book of Genesis after Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden, the narratives of Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Drunkenness and others formed a close parallel to the Seven Deadly Sins tradition, conceptualized here as extensions of the fig leaves.

Adam and Eve, The Roaring 20’s and the Great Depression, Hoo Doo and Conjure; the pieces try to retell a family history, older than we often assume.

This piece is based upon Jubal, Robert Johnson and the blues.  Wanted to put the image up, I’ll have more to say in a bit.

I’ve finished three pieces today derived from the Family Curse series, Adam’s Lament, I’m calling it.  It takes the elements of the curse upon the ground and our endeavors and works them into one piece. The character in the picture, Clay I have taken to calling him, is cut from a photograph by JohnVachon, 1941.  He is slumped over in despair or depression, and seems crushed. 

The elements from the curse, the earth, the thorns, thistles, sweat in work and our ultimate death form the background and the little bottle of graveyard dust reminds us that from dust we were formed and to dust we will return. 

Ironically making this piece and smaller collaged works has been a struggle for me as I stress about making art and making a living. Comically thinking about making the work, I reflected very little about my own struggles with work, not until I was finished with them and thinking about writing did I realize how much I chase after the perfect livelihood, that somehow I expect my faith to save me from living out this struggle myself among thorns and thistles.  My faith, the real faith, of course has bearings on my whole life, work included, but as I have been making art and blogging over  a year now, there has been constant questions about if/when I might perhaps make a living by art and the perennial, albeit oft forgotten, resolution to trust God where I am at, keep making work from my heart, get better at it and be thankful for the blessings I have and the grace I enjoy.

So it seems like this is a good place to start making art that I will begin to sell, maybe not make a living at it just yet but at least start funding my artmaking with my own art sells.

I had really expected that I was about done with the family curse series, a series exploring the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter three, through the lens of hoo doo curses and Great Depression images, playing on the idea that our struggles as individuals is somehow tied to a curse upon our family of origin, only it is a more ancient curse than we realize.

I have a few pieces in process that use the images of the family tree and family curse and ties it back to the tree of knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve partook of that brought sin in to the world.  I had hoped to finish finally with the cursed tree, where Christ became a curse for us and removed the curse of sin once and for all, but honestly those are hard images to imagine and execute.

Possibly as a stall, but also as it relates to the cursed roots of our family I am embarking on a series that explores the cursed fruit we see on our lives and the lives of those around us.  I have struggled between depicting the rest of Genesis after the fall and expulsion from the garden and the seven deadly sins, the resolution will reference both as this piece does.  The pride and rebellion of the Tower of Babel seems like a great parallel to pride in general working out in our own lives.

So here is the first piece of the next part of this series, trying to keep with Great Depression era images, I had to in this case reach back a bit further.  Pictured is the iceberg believed to have sunk the Titanic, the colossal of the White Star Line cruise ships. 

I enjoy that without being explained the image is abstract or looks at the Tower of Babel and Pride from a oblique angle, less literal and I like that, it’s joyful in a way I can’t describe.

Old photo of a worker picking cotton, a small vial of sweat and worn bandanna. 

The final piece in the series, though I am working on a few other related pieces.  Thought I would finish up posting these pieces as I am moving and will be sweating quite a bit today myself.

Thistles (or a thistle like species) springing up to frame and threaten the harvest being stacked in the old photo.

A famer plowing the field in a old photograph is surrounded by layers of thorns.

“we see the vivid juxtaposition of thorns surrounding a photograph of a farmer plowing behind a horse. Sharp thorns threaten the framer’s actions and seem to hem him in from all sides, alluding to the difficulty of working the earth.”

Old image of house and land from the Great Depression, Dust Bowl era, and parched earth picture cut and reassmebled on of a duplicate to get cracks in the piece.  Bottle full of graveyard dirt.  Part of the three that will be in a traveling show for CIVA.

The idea for these bottles predated the whole series, I had wanted to make little “message in a bottle” type pieces to give away and have been fascinated by the conept of the message in a bottle theme since hih school.  Being able to reproduce the jars and bottles to leave for people has been a motivation to finish this series.  The above is a collection of the seven objects represented in the whole series, snake skin/shed, small nation sack containing a man’s name written nine times, a dime and a single apple seed, a jar of tears, a bottle of dirt from a graveyard, a thorn, thistle and a piece of a bandanna. 

These bottles contain a vial of graveyard dust, a snake shed and ribs from a rattlesnake.

The ‘nation (domination) sack from the desire piece is reproduced here with the same same 9 elements, a 1930′s silver Mercury dime, an piece of parchment with a Man’s name written 9 times, a razor blade, a vial of honey, 7 apple seeds, a sprinkle of myrrh, a cinnamon stick, a snake rib, and a piece of a man’s bandanna.  The red top is the traditional red flannel used to make mojo hands.

 These last bottles contain the elements of the curse that relate to work, cursed earth in the form of a vial of graveyard dust, a thorn, a thistle and a vial of sweat.

The husband and wife photos is made from an old glass negative, the pin through the husband’s heart.  The botanical, zoological and collected objects in jars are adaptations from Genesis 3 and Proverbs 5, the concept of the ‘nation sack  from the Memphis Hoo Doo tradition; snake rib, a man’s name written 9 times on parchment, honey comb, apple seeds, 1934 dime, sweat on a bandanna, old Gillette razor, myrrh, cinnamon sticks.