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This collage project has been keeping me busy since I got a printer recently! I couldn't get going until the new printer came.
A bit of background: last year, while still cleaning out stuff during my mom’s transition to assisted living, I came across a lot of old documents she saved over the years. One of them was this Will – and it made for some unsettling reading. As it turns out, one of my ancestors was a plantation owner in North Carolina, complete with many slaves. I had never heard anything about this, ever, and it’s not a pleasant thing to learn. Of course, I don’t bear any personal guilt in these modern times, and this all happened before the United States came into being – as the date shows, this was established under the Crown.
At any rate (and not to talk it to death), I worked through a lot of conflicting emotions over it. For me, the bottom line comes down to two points: 1) I really don’t like other people deciding what I will and will not know, and 2) I don’t believe that simply ignoring, or keeping silent over something disreputable or inconvenient in the family lore, makes one noble: if anything, it makes one more of an enabler to those who wish to re-write the past. So my response is just to shine light on it, and simply present it as it was written.
I used some of my favorite techniques to help establish a storytelling effort in my exploration of this. It’s all very personal and not particularly lighthearted, or maybe even the best execution. But it’s a square look at it, and its effects over time.
After realizing I'd never get all my images, plus the text, onto a single manageable canvas, I decided to break it up into 3 separate canvases, and use design items to tie them together visually.
Here they are, all lined up on the wall as a finished piece:
Top canvas is 18x24". Here is a closeup, where the text is more visible:
I covered most of the canvas with an old map of North Carolina. I printed out the beginning of the text of the Will with an old style font, then used Distress Inks to "age" the document before laying it over the map.
Underneath what I started calling the "slave cutouts," are three pages of actual Slave Schedules of Halifax County, N.C., circa 1860 - about 100 years AFTER my ancestor's Will was written. (These Schedules list the slave owner's name, and the ages and sex of each owned slaves by check mark. These documents were microfiched copies available to the public for free downloads.) I placed a slave cutout over each one.
The cutouts themselves are representative of some of the names mentioned in the Will. The text excerpts I glued below each one were given the same aged treatment with the Distress Inks. The clothing or headwear on each cutout is from a photo of a dictionary definition of the word "slave." I printed that definition out on waterslide paper, so I could twist and fold that text to fit each cutout. (Waterslide paper acts like a faux photo emulsion lift/transfer.)
Here's a closeup of one:
The middle canvas is 10x20" and here's a closeup:
I used heavy-bodied acrylic paint for background texture. (The images are from my family albums, various generations of Hill descendants. I chose to turn the middle one into a negative image.) On the left side is an actual cross-section design of a slave ship I found under Creative Commons. I printed it out and made an image transfer of it using clear ConTact paper, so the background shows through. (If you ever review the conditions of these ships during the Middle Passage, be forewarned that they are disturbing.)
The last canvas is also 10x20". A closeup:
I used more of the heavy bodied acrylic paint here. The kids are my siblings and me, innocent of the past but certainly its beneficiaries.
I made a couple more clear image transfers of the cross on either side at the bottom, and glued the final words from the text of the Will.
To try to make it visually cohesive throughout, the margins were all painted the same dark blue, and each side contains strips of more text from the Will. The small images in the margins are botanical plates of indigo - an inland crop that required lots of labor. The textile industry as a whole helped not only the Crown, but the colonists and later the first citizens of what became the USA. Of course, I wanted the teardrops from the first canvas to travel throughout the piece as a visual metaphor, as well as to tie it together.
Whew! That was a lot. Thanks for looking and slogging through all this.
All comments are welcome and appreciated.
A bit of background: last year, while still cleaning out stuff during my mom’s transition to assisted living, I came across a lot of old documents she saved over the years. One of them was this Will – and it made for some unsettling reading. As it turns out, one of my ancestors was a plantation owner in North Carolina, complete with many slaves. I had never heard anything about this, ever, and it’s not a pleasant thing to learn. Of course, I don’t bear any personal guilt in these modern times, and this all happened before the United States came into being – as the date shows, this was established under the Crown.
At any rate (and not to talk it to death), I worked through a lot of conflicting emotions over it. For me, the bottom line comes down to two points: 1) I really don’t like other people deciding what I will and will not know, and 2) I don’t believe that simply ignoring, or keeping silent over something disreputable or inconvenient in the family lore, makes one noble: if anything, it makes one more of an enabler to those who wish to re-write the past. So my response is just to shine light on it, and simply present it as it was written.
I used some of my favorite techniques to help establish a storytelling effort in my exploration of this. It’s all very personal and not particularly lighthearted, or maybe even the best execution. But it’s a square look at it, and its effects over time.
After realizing I'd never get all my images, plus the text, onto a single manageable canvas, I decided to break it up into 3 separate canvases, and use design items to tie them together visually.
Here they are, all lined up on the wall as a finished piece:
Top canvas is 18x24". Here is a closeup, where the text is more visible:
I covered most of the canvas with an old map of North Carolina. I printed out the beginning of the text of the Will with an old style font, then used Distress Inks to "age" the document before laying it over the map.
Underneath what I started calling the "slave cutouts," are three pages of actual Slave Schedules of Halifax County, N.C., circa 1860 - about 100 years AFTER my ancestor's Will was written. (These Schedules list the slave owner's name, and the ages and sex of each owned slaves by check mark. These documents were microfiched copies available to the public for free downloads.) I placed a slave cutout over each one.
The cutouts themselves are representative of some of the names mentioned in the Will. The text excerpts I glued below each one were given the same aged treatment with the Distress Inks. The clothing or headwear on each cutout is from a photo of a dictionary definition of the word "slave." I printed that definition out on waterslide paper, so I could twist and fold that text to fit each cutout. (Waterslide paper acts like a faux photo emulsion lift/transfer.)
Here's a closeup of one:
The middle canvas is 10x20" and here's a closeup:
I used heavy-bodied acrylic paint for background texture. (The images are from my family albums, various generations of Hill descendants. I chose to turn the middle one into a negative image.) On the left side is an actual cross-section design of a slave ship I found under Creative Commons. I printed it out and made an image transfer of it using clear ConTact paper, so the background shows through. (If you ever review the conditions of these ships during the Middle Passage, be forewarned that they are disturbing.)
The last canvas is also 10x20". A closeup:
I used more of the heavy bodied acrylic paint here. The kids are my siblings and me, innocent of the past but certainly its beneficiaries.
I made a couple more clear image transfers of the cross on either side at the bottom, and glued the final words from the text of the Will.
To try to make it visually cohesive throughout, the margins were all painted the same dark blue, and each side contains strips of more text from the Will. The small images in the margins are botanical plates of indigo - an inland crop that required lots of labor. The textile industry as a whole helped not only the Crown, but the colonists and later the first citizens of what became the USA. Of course, I wanted the teardrops from the first canvas to travel throughout the piece as a visual metaphor, as well as to tie it together.
Whew! That was a lot. Thanks for looking and slogging through all this.
All comments are welcome and appreciated.
Yeah, I'm a little long-winded. 
