JAYNE MATRICARDI: MOTHERSCAPE

Wish You Were Here
wood, canvas, image transfers, 8 x 12 x 24 inches, 2020-2021

Wish You Were Here, a long scroll of transferred landscapes, winds from spool to spool and must be hand-cranked. Rather than telling a narrative story, as in traditional crankie boxes of the mid-1800’s, my scroll is a panorama of ghosted postcard memories collected from around the world by my grandfather during his time as a Merchant Marine in World War II. (This piece is referenced in the poem Motherscape.) As I transferred the images, I forced a continuous horizon line by revealing only parts of the original image, allowing portions to remain obscured or semi-obscured with the paper backing. In doing so, I am not only linking distance places, but forming connections between past and present, and forging a path from my ancestors to my children.