With the passing of my husbands "Nana" came the telling of many fond memories. For me, I had always known her as the little old lady, "Nana." To her family she carried many titles as such Joanie, Joan, Sister, Friend, Mom, and Nana. After hearing all of these stories, I immediately felt that I wanted to try and draw a portrait of her for their family. The message I sent my mother in law looked something like this, "Hey, I would really like to draw a portrait of Nana. I'm wondering if you happen to have any photos of her that really capture her personality." To which she responded with a big white binder.
I hadn't thought much of the significance the binder would play in this project, until the moment I began reading the little hand written notes Nana had left under all the images. It turns out the white binder was full memories and photos she had hand curated. I sat for a few hours and read through the entire thing. Pages and pages of stories written out by hand on lined paper. Photos and stories of old loves, family events, and fond memories. Armed with this new perspective of her life from a first person perspective, I started thinking about how much documenting her story meant to her. She spent so much time making sure each of those photos had a name attached to the right person. One portrait in particular really stuck out to me, it was an old black and white portrait captioned," this was taken sometime while I was in high school. Why? I haven't a clue. Where - not a clue. No date on it, but it's me - Joanie."
For me as the grand-daughter in law that happened to marry into the family when she had reached the older years of her life. It really struck me to see that little caption. I thought of how this Joanie must have seen her reflection changing throughout the years in the mirror as she became the woman I knew as "Nana." How though time changes a person, they also remain themselves. From this experience grew the idea that I wanted to try to capture her as she would have seen herself as a young woman and then again as I met her later in life.
I began by first drawing the portrait of Joanie (seen below) using the Adobe Fresco live oil brushes.
Joanie by Melody Nathan
Once the portrait of Joanie felt like a good likeness, I began drawing the portrait of Nana taken from the same perspective directly on top of the portrait of Joanie. I felt that this transition would recreate to some extent the passing of time and the changes that come with it. I kept in mind the hopes of using the time-lapse of the drawing process as the means for communicating this transition. It was an emotional process seeing how the features changes, but the she remained constant.
Nana by Melody Nathan
After completing Nana's portrait, for a short time I contemplated what the best kind of narrative would be for the time-lapse representing this passage of time. I spent some time wondering if it would be best to reach out to family and friends to collect stories of her life, but ultimately decided to run with her first hand account.
The video begins, "A young girl in Iowa sits in her crib..." Which was exactly how she began the first line in one of the stories found inside that white binder.
To experience the full project see the video below.