Slocum Family Stories & Future Art Projects.

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Part I

Perhaps you have noted this photo on my art desk when I posted on social media a photo of a newly sewn dress, pencil sketch or painting. You may have even wondered who it is. It is a rare family photo of my great-Aunt Jessie. Her full name is Jessie Helena Slocum Joyce. She was the only surviving daughter of my great-great grandfather Joshua Slocum and Virginia Albertine Walker. 

Jessie was born aboard one of the ships Joshua captained and when they were docked in a port just outside the Philippines. She traveled the world with her parents and brothers. One of her brothers is my great-grandfather. His name is Benjamin Aymar.  I knew him as a child and we called him B.A.

Jessie co-authored a book with Beth Day about her childhood at sea. The book carries both of their names on the inside page. After Jessie’s name is added, “The Captain’s Daughter.”  It is my favorite book of family stories. Everything in the book happened before her father’s famous solo-circumnavigation of the world in his boat, “The Spray.”  Too, before the publication of his now classic book, “Sailing Alone Around the World.”  A photo of her book is below:

Jessie studied painting when she was a child. When they were docked and ashore for a few months, her mother would arrange for her and B.A. to have private lessons with an established, local artist. 

Over the years, Jessie has become one of my great inspirations. She speaks to me as she turns, looks out from her chair and easel, and at the viewer of the photograph:

© SSD

 

I have kept her photo on each of the desks that I have drawn or painting on for several years now.  In my mind, I see her painting and she sees me. We celebrate each other as we are both artists and we are family. 

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        Part II

Since I was a very young child, my siblings and I were told stories of my great-great grandfather’s vast sailing adventures and achievements. When B.A. was quite old and in hospice, he lifted up from his bed, still wearing his favorite skull cap, and said to my older sister, brothers (my youngest sister wasn’t born yet) and I the following statement, “You are the great-great grandchildren of the greatest sailor that ever lived!” 

I have carried those words in my pocket like others carry a rubbing stone for decades. I tell people I was born with a captain’s story etched into my palm. The map of his journey truly felt engrained or tattooed onto part of my physical being. 

When I was working on my Masters in the Art of Teaching a few years ago, I took an Art course designed for teachers. I kept a hand-sized journal of the assignments we had to create. Small originals or photocopies of the work were kept in the journal. Here are a few photos of some of the pages:

© SSD

I really enjoyed this class and the variety of artwork we were instructed on how to make. The very first assignment was to create a simple, two dimensional mask on paper that expressed our individual histories. A mask that told a story about who we were. I immediately thought of that feeling I carried with me for so many years of having Joshua’s history fused / etched onto my physical being. 

My mother had gifted me a photograph of myself as a child (I look quite serious in it as I was unwell and often hospitalized when I was quite young). Too, I had in my possession a rectangle of paper inked by B.A. that spoke of Joshua setting off to sail (it was found tucked into a copy of Joshua’s book). I made a color copy of the photograph and added some highlights. I glued a second color copy of the piece of paper onto my forehead in the first photocopy.

Next, I tattooed my face with the map of Joshua’s  voyage around the world. I included names of continents, oceans and latitudinal lines curving across my face. I then color copied the piece with an ocean blue background and created a slide. 

When I turned the piece in to be graded, after showing it as a slide during class, my professor sent me a note advising me to hold onto this work as “It may prove significant down the road.” Here is a photo of that slide: 

© SSD

Here it is in my small journal:

© SSD

In this black and white close up, you can make out some of the writing on the paper.

I have returned to this sketchbook and this photo of my mask many times over the last few years since I made it. I now have plans to expand this work. This summer I will craft a much larger image of this work and include a more detailed route.

I am now thinking it will be painted & collaged onto a wooden surface that will be behind a plexiglass frame. The outlined map will be grooved into the wood. There will be a small, upright boat - the Spray - that will move through the grooves via an electric current. Near the base of the frame will be a button viewers can push to turn it on and off.  When the button is pushed on, the face image will light up one color and the grooved outline of the journey another. The Spray will sail across the image of my childhood face. The title of the piece, at this moment, is “Body of Water.” 

So much of this is just initial plans. I thought, too, of having the small model of the Spray be painted on metal and that the viewer would use a magnetic pointer across the plexiglass cover to move it along on its journey. These details will be worked on and finalized.

This is one of several major projects that are three-dimensional art works I have planned for completion this summer. All are so vivid in my mind. There is one with one of my watercolor paintings of fish on glass and that glass is the face of an aquarium. Behind that glass are ghosts from my life. Ghosts can’t cross bodies of water. Don’t want too tell to much…The framed photo of Jessie Helena Slocum Joyce will be sitting near to watch it all fall into place.  © SSD   ⚓