Rebuilding a Memory
Scale model of family home as it was in the 1980s
Hello, dear readers. As I continue to put the finishing touches on pieces for my solo art show Crayons & Cupboards, here is a sneak peek at part of my process, a scale model of my grandparents’ house as it was in 1985, to help me recapture a specific memory.
Time travel is real
Scientists have confirmed that time is not as constant or linear as it seems to be. Objects moving at different speeds, or positioned closer or farther from gravitational fields, experience different timelines. After a twin travels to space, they return slightly younger than their earthbound sibling.
Crayons & Cupboards is a show built on the premise that time travel is possible in yet another way. If I look at enough photos taken during my childhood in and around my grandparents’ house in the 1980s, if I dig through boxes and unearth small objects connected to those times, if I create enough crayon-based artworks in response to these memories, then those times will become real again.
The physical house that once contained these memories belongs to someone else now. It seems impossible, but my reality would not match the house that I find at the same address today. And yet to me, the house on Tanner Road still exists as it did in the mid-1980s before I was out of grade school.
Even as I write this I must acknowledge that this is only one version of the house that I knew; I landed in 1985 because I decided to. But I knew this house in the 70s before the kitchen addition, then after; I knew it when it was re-painted cream and gray-blue; I knew it when the old chimney was torn down rebuilt, the 1950 shingles pulled off, and the whole thing re-wrapped in vinyl. I knew it with my grandmother, and without, and when it was emptied and when Grandpop moved away.
Frozen orange juice
I’m trying to capture a moment, or maybe an aggregate of moments around 1985, when it was summer, and quite hot and humid, and I had left Reading to spend some time with my grandparents at their house in Hatboro.
It was after dark, with the windows open to the breeze and the fans blowing, and we sat outside on the front porch for the night air, with the little orange glass lamp from New Mexico burning, and we were encircled by planters and hanging baskets filled with my grandmother’s impatiens along the perimeter of the porch, and beyond that border the night was blue-black, and there were lightning bugs everywhere, emerging from the grass and flying all around.
My grandmother used to freeze orange juice in waxed paper Dixie cups, with popsicle sticks jutting out at an angle, and we each held one by the stick, and I was sucking the orange syrup out of mine, leaving the crunchy, upside-down-cup-shaped shell of ice behind.
Nana Bea was sitting on a cushioned redwood patio chair or maybe an aluminum folding chair, and I climbed up on her knee. Her skin felt slightly sticky from perspiration and a little cool, and she told me I was getting so big and heavy, but she let me stay there for a little while, anyway, before the circulation in her leg was cut off.
That’s it. That’s the moment I’m trying to capture.
Did I time travel? Was this real? Who knows. Maybe it wasn’t orange juice. Maybe there were many instances of climbing onto her knee. Could it be that the redwood patio furniture hadn’t been purchased yet when we she was making frozen juice pops in Dixie cups? Was the perspiration on her knee, or was it her arm?
Have you ever “time traveled,” and if so, how good at it were you?
Screen doors, impatiens
For those who are curious about my technical process, I haven’t even started making the actual image yet, the one of the porch with the warm light, the flowers, the blue-black night, the lightning bugs, the feeling of enclosure and safety and summer heat. The plan is to use gouache, crayon, and colored pencil to complete a 17 x 11 inch artwork.
With the installation deadline looming for the show in two days, instead I’ve been combining what I know—what I think I remember—into a set of floor plans, and a three-dimensional scale model of the house. That model can be seen in the illustrations for this article.
Overall I’ve been building it with paper and cardboard and white glue. For the screen door I used floral wire to do the metal work. A teabag for the screen. The impatiens are globs of dried acrylic paint attached to preserved moss.
You are invited
Come see the model and twenty new crayon-based artworks, and hear more family stories at the opening night reception, July 10 at Art Plus in West Reading, PA. I may bring the house model just for the opening night (it’s so fragile!), but the 2D work will be up for all of July 2026.
I love this!
You have certainly taken me to a time and place I have never been. I have enjoyed your eloquent description quite a bit. And I have a suspicion that you will cherish the written and pictorial efforts for a long time. Having only very limited memories of any of my grandparents was due to various choices made by all the possible adult participants -- on all sides of the family, and for reasons that were both trivial and huge. I look forward to the insights that will document your more memorable experience.