Etching and Aquatint​

9"x12", 4"x6", 6"x8" zinc plates

2017

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I have dredged up

Hard fragments lost

I thought, in years

Of whirlwind dust.

 

Exposed to light,

Silently rough

And broken shards

Confront belief. 

 

-Toyo Suyemoto, "Camp Memories" 

 

"Camp Memories" is part of an ongoing investigation of how context alters the meaning of diction. Growing up, my family referred to two separate places as "camp"-- foremost, the log cabin in Northern Vermont that has been in my mother's maternal family for generations, but also as a euphemistic term for the Topaz Relocation Center commonly used by former internees. Named after my great-aunt's poem cited above, "Camp Memories" seeks to investigate how the correlation of these places through language distorted my understanding of both while growing up by recreating family photographs taken at the Vermont camp from before I was born.