DEAD DAD
For more than ten years, I have had a dead dad. During those years, I have seen him in freshly polished shoes and magnolias; felt him driving the car with my arms, looking over my shoulder into the blind spot. My dad’s car was spick-and-span and the music always played just quietly enough to not disturb the conversation, not loud enough to sing along. My dad died at 79 years old.
My good friend and long-time creative collaborator Donna Akrey grew up with a dead dad. He died when she was very young, but led a heroic and impressive after-life in the stories that her aunts, uncles, mom and sisters told her, about the-dad-that-would-have-been. Her dad died in his prime, a dad she never got to know.
Donna Akrey and I have been collecting stories and images from people who have a dead dad. The stories may show a blurred face of a man in a spitfire airplane, at the helm of a fishing boat at sea, with a hand holding the TV remote, with a hand full of licorice allsorts or chicken bones. Dead dads take on many incarnations. We will use these snippets of other people’s memories, as fuel to create a morphing landscape installation. Yes, the exhibition was about dads --- dead dads at that --- but it is also a rumination on memory and the size and viscosity of memory. A vague longing.
My good friend and long-time creative collaborator Donna Akrey grew up with a dead dad. He died when she was very young, but led a heroic and impressive after-life in the stories that her aunts, uncles, mom and sisters told her, about the-dad-that-would-have-been. Her dad died in his prime, a dad she never got to know.
Donna Akrey and I have been collecting stories and images from people who have a dead dad. The stories may show a blurred face of a man in a spitfire airplane, at the helm of a fishing boat at sea, with a hand holding the TV remote, with a hand full of licorice allsorts or chicken bones. Dead dads take on many incarnations. We will use these snippets of other people’s memories, as fuel to create a morphing landscape installation. Yes, the exhibition was about dads --- dead dads at that --- but it is also a rumination on memory and the size and viscosity of memory. A vague longing.
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