Art and History

I never knew my grandfathers. They passed away before my parents were married. I've seen pictures of them and heard stories through the years. My maternal grandmother while not a diagnosable hoarder was more of a pack rat. When she was moved to an assisted living home and her house sold my mother was the one sibling stuck cleaning out my grandmother's house (I helped a little.). While a sad task it was also like finding lost treasure. We found a huge pile of old random film not developed (which I later found a special print shop and had the lot of them printed, put in albums, and gave to my mother for Christmas one year- she hadn't even seen some of the pictures before), a collection of paper coffee cups from McDonald's (which I'm sure we shouldn't have thrown away because they were probably vintage or something), lots of tupperware containers with no lids (which I'm also sure were quite valuable) and a box full of old postcards from my grandfather dating back to 1910 and through World War II.

I'm memesmorized by most things old...buildings, clippings, pictures, magazines, furniture, etc... When home visiting my parents one weekend I took out the plastic bag full of postcards, read through them and looked at the images on the front. Later that week while taking a walk I found an old badly in need of repair table with fold down sides that was put out for the garbage. My boyfriend loved it when I begged him to help me carry it all the way home and store yet another piece of furniture in our apartment until I decided what to do with it.

What I ended up doing was painting the table top and edges in gold, using a layer of crackle glaze, then a top layer of black paint. The legs were repaired and spray painted a solid black. I then went to a copy center and made color copies on card stock paper of the front and back of many of the postcards, arranging them on the table, and then decopaging them in place. I put a couple of coats of clear satin on the top of the entire table to help adhere everything in place and protect it.

This process of creating this table was therapeutic for me in many unexpected ways. I was able to create art but also able to explore and find out a little bit more about my grandfather and his life. It might be silly to say, but I felt a little closer to him after making the piece.