The Alchemy of Ancestry
The Alchemy of Ancestry was originally made as part of my participation in Rejmyre Matters, a residency at a glass factory in Rejmyre, Sweden. The residency coincided with a planned trip to visit Sweden, my mother’s homeland to which I had not been in over 15 years. I came to Sweden many times as a child and learned enough Swedish to speak to my mormor and morfar (grandparents.) We spent a handful of summers at my grandparents cottage on the colony of Brändaholm on the island of Dragsö, a magickal place of adventure imprinted so deep that I have recurring adventure dreams which take place there.
In imagining a project I could do while at the Rejmyre glasbruk I could not help but think about these connections–the many relatives my mother tries to remind me I met over coffee when I was seven. I got a book from the Los Angeles public library, Swedish Glass, by Elisa Steenberg published in 1952, which covers the early history of Swedish glass production. I scanned a lot of the small black and white images of different glassware and began to manipulate the silhouettes. One of the silhouettes appeared to look like a kiss. I thought of lips on glass and I remembered the glasses I used to drink hallonsaft from–the same ones from which I was now drinking wine with my cousins and uncle and husband. We were on the island of Aspö, my mormor’s birthplace and as we walked the length of it from the ferry to our family side, my mother talked about the homestead and the relatives and I wanted to hear a list of those names from her lips. I wanted to hear this with the mix of the sound of glass being blown as an intimation of the magick of glassmaking and ancestry. It can be held in hand, in symbol or heard through story, or song or held in taste and touch as lips to glass to tongue to liquid–the alchemy of memory, like glass.
For V2.0 I decided to recreate the installation with Young in mind, heeding the spirits of these mama-sans who are also mine and of which I am a part. You raise a glass to remember. And return.