This Was Meant to Last Forever

(Above:  This Was Meant to Last Forever, The Wall of Ancestors.  10 1/4" x 8 3/4". Original Ambrotype with words clipped from a late 19th Bible and a pressed, four-leaf clover in an antique frame. Click on any image to enlarge.)

Almost every Tuesday and Friday finds me hand stitching while at Bill Mishoe's auction house.  Sometimes I bid.  Sometimes I don't.  Sometimes I'm successful with a bid but generally not.  Why?  Well, most of the time I'm not willing to pay much for anything.  Basically, I'm cheap ... as in "really cheap" because I honestly don't need anything.  I just love watching the remains of other people's lives up on the auction block.  Thinking about things saved, things discarded, and the changing nature of memory and value are at the core of my artistic concepts.  

 (Above:  Daguerreotype disassembled.)

So until recently, I never ended up with a real ambrotype.  They generally cost more than I'm willing to pay.  Unbelievably, I ended got three of them just the other week. Of course, the covers were broken, but I didn't care.  The glass was dirty too, but again ... I didn't care.  This gave me a chance to really LOOK at an ambrotype, take one apart, and figure out how to use it!  What I thought was hard, metal was actually quite soft, embossed foil-like material.  It was easy to take apart, clean, and put back together again.

(Above:  This Was Meant to Last Forever, The Wall of Ancestors.  10 1/4" x 8 3/4". Original Ambrotype with words clipped from a late 19th Bible and a pressed, four-leaf clover in an antique frame.)

I wasn't sure how I wanted to use these once precious images even though I knew they would somehow become part of my Wall of Ancestors, a collection of altered anonymous photos that are part of my solo installation, Anonymous Ancestors.  For two weeks, the ambrotypes sat idle in my studio.  Then, I bid on four, late 19th century oil paintings in antique French country style frames.  Each scene was painted on a beveled wooden panel.  The frames were in rough shape, but had a certain "old world charm" and weren't so damaged that I couldn't repair enough to use.

(Above:  Four antique paintings on wooden panels, top mounted on hunter green linen and framed with a green patina liner and heavy burl veneer frame.  15 1/2" x 27".)

It didn't take me long to scrounge up some absolutely beautiful scraps of picture frame moulding to present the four paintings in a new but still traditional way.  Two of their original frames were then used to shadowbox two of ambrotypes.  Words were added from a late 19th Bible.  When searching for the words, two pressed four-leaf clovers fell out of the Bible.  I added them too!

(Above:  Box of old keys from my friend Margaret Blank in Canada.  THANK YOU, Margaret!)

I still haven't decided exactly what to do with the other ambrotype or the other two antique frames but I'm sure something might happen at another, upcoming auction!  Perhaps I will incorporate a few of the old keys my friend Margaret sent me from Canada!