Dorothea Lange’s picture of a mother and child, looking quite distressed, as they traveled Route 66 in hopes of better fortune, is set against Hans Holbein’s woodcut from the Dance of Death series showing death coming for a small child.  The bottles of tears and razors and pins and needles to represent pain.

This was the last of the 7 pieces to get finished. 

The picture is a 1930′s Carnival worker, biting the head of a snake.  The jars are all snake parts, a skull of a viper, a rattler’s tail, ribs from a python and a rattler, some snake sheds found in the desert and small bottle of graveyard dust.

Working on a series of new pieces, based upon the idea of a family curse from a powerful conjure man, working itself out in our lives.  We didn’t do anything ourselves to be cursed but some distant relative has passed on a curse to us and we are miserable under it but also made more miserable by our own futile attempts to break the curse, only complicating the matter and further playing into this curse.

I have lots to say and make in this regards, but I am still at work at it, have been for months, researching curses, hoo doo and conjure traditions and sorting it out visually, while collecting photos of our relatives, family histories and the objects, minerals, charms and  botanicals that represent these curses. 

I am headed to a conference and hope to have copious notes and some new connections to write about.