The Grandfather Project 2010

This is my new project and life endeavor. In a few weeks I will be relocating to Idaho City, ID to start work on what, at this time, I am calling The Grandfather Project. If you would like to support this project financially, it is listed on a website called Kickstarter.com, which allows artists of various sorts to solicit their friends for "pledges" to complete their project.

Here is the link to my Kickstarter platform, pledges run through AMAZON.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alisonsweet/the-grandfather-project




The Grandfather project will be video documentation of a lifetime of stories told by my grandfather, Joseph A. Snyder. Joseph Snyder is currently 90 years old and has been married to my grandmother, Rosemary Snyder, for 64 years. They have lived their entire lives in the western United States and are thus living pieces of 20th century western life and culture.

Anyone who has lived for 90 years would have an interesting perspective on life to share but additionally Joseph Snyder has lived an incredibly diverse intriguing existence that is worth hearing about. When his life began he was put up for adoption, only to be reclaimed by his Jehovah witness mother at the age of six. His mother then lied about his age in order for him to work in the coal mines at an earlier age and this is just the very beginning……..



Joseph and Rosemary Snyder continue to live independently in their log home in the rather remote Idaho mountains above Idaho City, Idaho.They now live a quite life, playing a daily game of cribbage together. They are both avid readers and hobbyists with my Grandfather carving and my Grandmother making quilts and knitting.


Their Duquette Pines home near Idaho City, Idaho



While, Personal documentation accounts are immediately valuable to the family and interested parties, these first hand cultural narratives gain even more historical value and relevance as time passes and there is no longer anyone around to provide the perspective from their generation.

The Grandfather Project is scheduled to take place summer of 2010 -- as the project gets underway short stories will be available for view online along with photos and project updates to project pledgers.

In addition to the video documentation, there were also a be a photos series based on my grandparents own artistic endeavors and a digital archive of the six generations of photographs that are in their possession.

After the completion of the video recordings, a longer video piece will be available as well as a series of fine art photographs that will be shown at Five15 Arts in Phoenix, Arizona in the fall of 2010. The work will also be shown at The Phoenix Art Museum June of 2011.


Playing Cribbage -- November 2009






Myself with my grandfather in their home, November 2009

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and I would greatly appreciate it if you would consider making a pledge on Kickstarter.com

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alisonsweet/the-grandfather-project

The Bird Cage -- multi-media Installation by Alison Sweet and Cory Weeks.

THE BIRD CAGE at ARTLINKS AE ENGLAND GALLERY

The Bird Cage was a multi-media installation featuring 21 portraits of Modern Day women, a video of interviews and about 800 feet of recreated hand made wallpaper.

The title of the show along with its wallpaper pattern is from the infamous Bird Cage theater in Tombstone Arizona. Tombstone was a boomtown due to the discovery of silver in 1877 before Arizona was a state. it was often a very tough place to survive and yet was also one of the fanciest and richest towns in the west during it's time. The Bird Cage theater was only in operation from 1881 to 1889 but during that time it developed a reputation for debauchery, violence and prostitution.

The Bird Cage gained it's name from the fourteen cribs on the balcony level of theater were legal prostitution took place. Few women actually chose a life of prostitution, although there were a few that did for adventure, its then lucrative nature, or as an escape from the potentially dull life of a housewife. More Often though, when women would lose the men in their family they would have little other option than prostitution or suicide and many women chose the latter.

The artists don't intend this to be a show about prostitution or elude in anyway that the modern day women in these portraits are prostitutes. The intention is to examine women's place in history and in Arizona history both historically and currently.

Cory Weeks and Alison Sweet are both recent graduates of Arizona State University and modern day feminists dedicated to furthering the cause of women's rights and equality both politically and culturally. The days of The Bird Cage were really not that long ago in history and while, women's rights have certainly progressed since then there is still a long ways to go before men and women are truly equal in society. The hope in these portraits is to envision how the future "wild west" will embrace the value of women in society. This vision includes equal pay, gender equality, and destruction of the modern stereotypes of beauty.

The women in the portraits are the artists friends and fellow female artists that agreed to sit for a "wild west" persona portrait and share their story about how they came to Arizona and their roll in modern times. In preparation for the portraits the women were also encouraged to bring items to be included as props that related to them as
individuals as well as females. The portrait style was inspired by a different "notorious" place, Storyville, New Orleans and the photos by Ernest Bellocq.

Here are a few of the portraits that were in the show:

Installation photos
Artlink AE England Gallery
424 Central Avenue
Civic Space Park

I submitted this project to The Contemporary Art Forum of The Phoenix Art Museum and was selected to receive one of their 2010 material grants. I presented the project to Contemporary Art Forum and will be able to show the project I am planning for this summer in the Phoenix Art Museum for month in the spring of 2011.