Nan Stombaugh

The body of work shown here The Healing Collection (2008-09) digital collages are a combination of photographs I have shot along with vintage, and repurposed images manipulated in Adobe Photoshop. During Christmas 2007, I fell quite seriously ill and after years of not creating art this was the wake up call I needed—a healing that would take place in heart, body and soul.  In the summer of 2008 I stumbled upon a Soul Collage course at the Jung Center merging intuition, art making and spirituality, and mixed media class at Glassell School of Art, which helped jumpstart, this subsequent body of work, The Healing Collection (2008-09).

In The Healing Collection, I incorporate my own photographs, and vintage/repurposed images to investigate the various aspects of our personalities that create a seemingly seamless whole. And it is in those gaps and cracks and the places in between where the literal collaged elements and our metaphysical selves meet that the discovery of identity and spirituality takes place.  My artwork if informed by lived experiences, undergraduate and graduate training in liberal arts, studio art training, theory and criticism.  My work then is intended for the viewer to find this same “safe space” to question their beliefs and assumptions creating a dialogue between the image and its audience. And it was during the making of this these images the one I continued to reflect upon was Coming Home made at a point in my life when I began to physically heal and had had reconciliation with my family of origin. This work is the touchstone for my forthcoming new collection. Coming Home.

 When I was three my grandfather unexpectedly passed away and my only recollection of him was through his photographs, business, collections and cameras… I was told I was a lot like him and photographed in a similar manner…what did/does that mean? I want/ed to investigate.  Coming Home will be a long term project consisting of 25-30 digital collages using appropriated images (in this case) my grandfather's 2-1/4 negatives and photographs taken while stationed in North Africa during WWII and subsequent return to rural Indiana (1940s-60s) where I grew up and my own digital photographs of images Houston, and San Antonio my homes for the last 10 years. Coming Home is an examination of my own history and an opportunity for the audience to contemplate their history(ies), their culture(s), and familie(s).