Photo Documentation

Since most of you probably found your way to this blog through my website (www.alexandrajohancock.com, for those of you who didn't) I feel that I need to give credit to the awesome folks who have been helping me photodocument my work in preparation for my online debut.

The photos of "Family Tree (Maternal)" were done by Truman Grayson, whose work can be seen at www.trumangrayson.com, and Mary Katherine Morris, whose site is www.marykatherinemorris.net .

Some sample images:  





Also, Mary Katherine helped me with documenting my drawings for the site over the weekend...they look great!

Sample Drawing Photos:

Family Tree (Self Portrait)

My next big project (expected to be completed by the end of March) is a full body casting of myself. The medium is the dirt from my ancestors' graves.

My thought process for the piece is that there are parts of all of my ancestors in me, in my body, my dna. I long to know who I got my blonde hair from, my sense of humor, my tendancy to sunburn..all the little details that make me, me. However, there is really no way for me to ever know, since the sources of my identity (my ancestors) are dead. I see myself as being a mashed up conglomoration of all of my ancestors... a mix of indicipherable, unidentifiable parts. So, to represent the presence of my heritage within my physical body, I am casting myself out of the only physical remains of them left in the world...the dirt of their graves.

The actual casting process has been a long and hard one... finding a binder for the dirt, how to position myself for balance in the final product without making the postion imposible to take a mold off of, making a core, a frame, and a base etc.

However, the work is in progress and I have a couple of photos (displayed below) documenting the body casting process and the plaster mold into which the dirt will go.

First of all, body casting:

To do the casting of my head and neck, I obviously couldn't pull a plaster mold off my hair, so I made a wax replica.

 

 Then put it all together...

 

More updates to come...

To Start...

Welcome to my blog!

Let's skip right over the formal stuff where I state my name and age and favorite color, because that's what the profile on this thing is for, and I've already filled that out.

I will tell you that I'm an artist, more specifically, a sculptor. I will also tell you that I want this blog to be mostly about my art, what I'm in the process of working on, what ideas I have for upcoming projects, shows I'm in etc. etc. So, first, I guess you should know a little bit about the work I'm involved in at the moment.

My mother died my freshman year of college, and as one would assume, that traumatic loss found its way into my art. However, after a few semesters of extremely weighty nest/egg imagery, the presence of loss in my work has evolved. 

Over the past year I've done extensive genealogical research into my mother's side of the family, and have found roots tracing all over the southeastern United States all the way back to England and Germany. My most recent body of work is about the ancestors I have "met" in my research, and the disconnection I feel from them. The best way for you to understand is to read my artist statement...

I consider my genes heirlooms. I have inherited no great wealth or “valuable” earthly possessions from my mother's premature death, but that does not mean I have inherited nothing, for better or worse. She left me her cheekbones and nose. She left me her short temper and inclination for creativity. She left me her emotional outbursts and a thousand other things. Her death also left a void stretching between myself, the living, and my ancestry. Without my mother I feel a disconnection between these heirlooms that she left in me and the people that she inherited them from.

In this body of work, I use my art as a means to seek out the enigmatic ancestors that contribute to the composition of my own identity. I am drawn to their only physical remains left: the dirt of their graves. I harvest samples of earth from each grave and use them as representations of the part of each person that exists within me. Deep down I understand that I will never really know these people who existed then turned back into dirt long before my time. Yet I still long to understand who my ancestors were, what they felt and thought and looked like. The only place I have to go in my endeavor to reach them is their graves, and the dirt they have become. As I try to bring myself closer and closer to these people, my art gives shape to, and attempts to fill, the abyss between the living and the dead.

So, that's basically what all of the work this blog will involve is about: the abyss between me, the living, and the dead.