LAUREN PACKARD ART

Ghosts In My Mind

“Ghosts In My Mind” was inspired by the 1920’s book, “Ghosts of My Friends”, in which friends would sign a book page and then fold it over resulting in a mirror image that was called the friend’s “ghost”.  These symmetrical images are reminiscent of brain scans before and after my brain surgery in 2014, highlighting the juxtaposition between science and emotion. These prints explore dichotomies of my experience: health and sickness, trauma and recovery, right brain and left brain, unknown and known, past and present, queerness and gender binaries. These prints explore queer identity with words and statements made surrounding my personal coming out and the larger issue of identity politics.

In this series I use alcohol ink to write out significant personal words and phrases relating to queer identity and gender politics that have stood out in my memory, like ghosts in my mind. After writing the words on half of the paper, I fold the paper to make a mirror image monoprint, Rorschach style, blurring words and color into abstraction. The newly created abstract landscape is representative of the forever changed emotional landscape these words had on me, further blurring the emotional trauma of these words on me. The words are mostly unseen, but sometimes you can see a ghost trace left behind.

Growing up a competitive swimmer and near the ocean, the water has always been a source of inspiration for me. The looseness and unexpectedness in this series is reminiscent of water splashes on paper. Water has been a space of reflection, meditation, introversion, a connection behind mind and body. While the words mostly disappear, the landscapes- physical and emotional- are forever changed.