The Things They Left Behind

When I was a kid, I was absolutely certain that I could solve mysteries. Too many hours spent reading Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown convinced me that there were always tidy answers to every enigma, and that if I put in enough time, willpower and shoestring-detective gumption, I’d be able to unearth them.

In no particular order, I became obsessed with (and sure I could solve):

• the lost colony of Roanoke
• the disappearance of Helen Candy Brach, heiress to the Brach Candy fortune
• finding Amelia Earhart
• the kidnapped Lindbergh baby
• the secret codes in a board game advertisement just before the attack on Pearl Harbor (scroll down to “The Creepy Coincidence of the Deadly Double”)

And pretty much anything on the pages of those Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown books. (Remember this “spooky” video? It played for years!)

I’m older now, but no less obsessed when I encounter a spooky unknown. Of particular fascination to me are the everyday artifacts and clues left behind by the disappeared.  Sometimes, they’re the detritus of a life interrupted—combs left on dressers after a morning grooming, a pile of bills meant to be paid that evening. But sometimes, these objects are more ominious—a scrawled note describing a premonition or a hastily-scribbled attempt to leave a clue before heading into an unknown fate.

My show at Firecat Projects in Chicago this December will be comprised of dreams, hallucinations, premonitions and rituals, a mystery of people long disappeared and the things they left behind. The images above and below are preview sketches of the “premonition” pieces I’m burning now…dreamy harbingers of dark times to come. Stay tuned for more posts, previews and updates as I create this body of work.