Brenda Francis Pelkey

My work concentrates on the private fashion that certain individuals formulate regarding their identity in their domestic environments. The chosen sites represent some aspect of the individual's experience in the world. The objects incorporated in the decoration of their yards are related to past events, places  lived, or places travelled. The scenes are  reworked and integrated into their yards much in the same way we integrate our past experiences and find aspects of our 'past selves' manifesting in the 'present'.   When I began this project I was taken by the fanciful idea that my subjects exhibited such an exuberant imagination that they were unable to make their yards appear like everyone elses'.

During the process of setting up movie lights, posing the individuals and spending hours talking to them, a much more complex picture emerged.  Both Robert Wanka and Mr. Edwards were immigrants, from Bavaria and England. They reconstructed fragments of remembered places that were once significant to them. Murray Senkus relocated from a rural community and recreated for his daughter a fantastical rural scene complete with a replica settlers' shack and stuffed bear. The 'folk environments' are also purposeful commemoratives that visibly knit the past and present into a coherent now.