Dusty Details

oil on paper, 2008

I moved into a museum of family history and an altered universe when I set up studio in my 93 year-old grandmother’s house. Carmen Adolfina Carrión Coronel’s life in Ecuador has been a world away from mine in Northeastern Massachusetts—in distance, time, experiences and prerogative.

In examining the dusty details of her past life I have reconstructed experiences that she can’t remember she had. I’ve poured through albums and albums of photos that she can neither see nor remember. I’ve recorded hours of her stories. To ask whether they be fact or fiction would be irrelevant. One of my favorites include her selling the Virgin Mary a cup of honey while running away to a mountain town called Yungilla.