Friends of Lena

Friends of Lena is a series of photo-illustrations that construct a visual narrative based on a group of "found" Kodachrome slides from an antique thrift shop in St. Peter, MN. Working from digital scans (4000 ppi) of the original slides, I manipulated the images in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. By adding photographic and typographic elements, incorporating drawing and brushstrokes, I began constructing my story of Lena Roach from Gilmore City, Iowa. Through research online I uncovered Lena's real history and tried to honor that with my vision and developed a visual narrative from print to print. The prints are produced using a professional quality ink-jet printer (giclée) process on natural archival fine art papers. The prints are 22" x 30".

The subjects of the work are the images that Lena Roach took throughout her life, mostly during a span of time in the 1950– 60's. They include family, friends and groups of school children that were in her grade-school classes and events throughout her tenure as a school teacher. These images represent a slice of Middle American life as seen through the perspective of an amateur photographer. My artistic intention was to blur the line between fine art printmaking and the digital printmaking process.

For the first exhibition, I had the images hanging from a clothesline in the gallery space using the clips seen in these photographs. When I wasn't able to exhibit by using the clothesline in a free hanging space, I hung them on the wall with the clips (as seen below).

Friends of Lena was exhibited at: The 410 Gallery Project, Mankato, MN; The ArtCenter on 7 Gallery, Minnetonka, MN; Centennial Student Union, Minnesota State University, Mankato, MN.