Poking Around in the Past

I've been looking through photos, old papers, scrapbooks, recipes and all kinds of stuff that I took from my mother's apartment. I'm in the middle of making a new kind of more sculptural work - sort of an ultra or uber combination of panels, including encaustic paintings, dimensional components and all kinds of things. The idea is to have all the parts relate and make a narrative on the wall without narrating - the viewer reads the components and puts together the narrative which may be just a visual journey or a discovered biographical story.

So much for the heavy explanatory lifting. You'll have to see it when it's done.

Here are some pix of my mother that I'm working with.

Here is Eleanor a few years back looking very calm and happy - on a cruise, I think.

This was a formal portrait by Purdy, a famous Boston commercial photographer, taken when she was in her teens.

And this, of course, is my favorite. The idea of my mother on a horse is so ridiculous and unexpected that I was astonished when I found this (cropped and de-colored by me and Photoshop). This strange event must have happened during one of her many trips in later years. I showed her the photo to see if she could tell me more about it, but all she could say is, "Who's that horse?"