“Jennie Wren”

This ongoing body of work explores my female ancestry through layered digital compositions made from scans of original photographs, letters, postcards, certificates, and other personal documents. Each piece is constructed from strips and squares of these materials, arranged in a pattern reminiscent of a quilt. Like a quilt, the work brings together fragments of memory and lived experience, stitching separate moments into a unified visual narrative. Quilts have long served as objects of preservation and storytelling, often created by women to document family histories and pass them through generations. By echoing this structure, the work reflects both the physical act of piecing together family archives and the emotional process of reconstructing inherited histories.

The piece shown on the left is of my great-grandmother, Jennie Wren. After the attacks on Pearl Harbor, she enrolled in the United States Cadet Nurse Corps. The quilt-like composition incorporates scans of her nursing certificates, exam records, and hospital correspondence, interwoven with photographs for her throughout her life. Arranged in blocks, these documents function like patches in a quilt, each holding a piece of her story. Together they create a visual archive that honors her legacy.

The piece show on the right is Berta, my great-grandmother who worked for the draft board in Los Angeles during World War II, while her husband served as pilot overseas. The composition incorporates scans of wartime letters exchanged between them, fragments of handwriting, envelopes, and photographs arranged in a similar quilt-like structure. Each square becomes a preserved moment of communication; evidence of distance, uncertainty, and devotion during wartime. By piecing together these letters as visual fragments, the work reflects how personal relationships were sustained through written correspondence, transforming physical records and letters into a larger pattern of memory and resilience.