It is relevant though! After more copier-litho experimentation and bus-induced deep reflection, I believe I have figured out a sort of thesis for my printmaking semester, which pulls in all the methods I'll be using, including book-making.
The women on my mom's side of my family are like history hoarders. There are literally trunks and boxes filled with pictures, letters, official documents, artwork, garments, dating back to the early 1800s. And all while I was growing up, my gramma and great-gramma were always telling me everyone's stories. They both had/have this insane amount of family history committed to memory, but really intimate stuff, stuff that probably wouldn't be interesting or funny to most people outside our family. And especially when my great-gramma's Alzheimer's got really bad the last 10 years or so of her life, she would just tell me any memory she could conjure up as it floated to the surface, lots of stuff she remembered being told by her mother and grandmother (the former born about 1896, the latter in the 1860s or 70s).That's originally from an email sent to another professor, attempting to figure out why I find myself drawn to Victorian death portraits as source and reference material.
Basically, I've spent my whole life immersed in intimate, day-to-day, seemingly unimportant history, much of it from around the time of the photos I've been using as references. I don't know why dead children specifically, other than I've been fascinated with death since I was very, very young and that most pictures of women with their children that I can find, the kids are dead in. But I know I'm always crazy curious about the lives of the people in the photos, and I think it stems from my upbringing. I think the reason why I like using them in conjunction with print, is that with multiples of a base reproduction, I can explore different possibilities about what their stories were.
This is my goal for the semester: To combine my narrative inclinations, my obsession for death portraits, and my deep love of history into a series of books. I'm not sure quite how many yet; I suppose the narratives I create will dictate that.
In terms of blog posting, I've created and Monday and Saturday schedule for myself. Monday postings will always occur in the morning and probably include pictures occasionally; Saturday whenever I get to a wifi hot spot and will include pictures of the week's work. My tally of hours spent working and researching every week will include hours spent from Sat. night/Sun. morning to the following Sat. morning.
Studio hours: 14
Research hours: 2
Total for 1/26 - 2/02: 16
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