Saturday, October 11, 2014

Stallings Island Revisited: RELICS


This is a recently completed collage that is part of a series I'm working on entitled "Stallings Island Revisited". The entire series will be exhibited in January 2015. Stallings Island is an island in the Savannah River which has great archaeological significance. Prehistoric native Americans inhabited the area in and around Stallings Island and the island contains concrete evidence, in the form of pottery, stone implements and skeletal remains, of their lifestyle and culture. The pottery created by the Stallings Island people is thought to be the oldest pottery on the North American Continent. Stallings Island has been formally excavated by archaeologist numerous times the first being in 1929 by Harvard University resulting in a report entitled 'The Peabody Papers'.  From 1984 until 2004 my family and I resided very close to the area of the Savannah River where Stallings Island is located.  My husband and our sons frequently fished and canoed in the area and took an interest in learning more about the history of the island. Our eldest son (who is now 39) chose Stallings Island as his senior project in high school. Many of the collage paintings in this series contain copies of his handwritten report adding an element of personal history to the series as well.