Family Branches
My Family workshop, in Frome, 2021
On FAMILY branches. It was Ella, she was 4 then, and loved to draw. She was asked at school to create a family tree with all her relatives on it. She did a montage and glued some photos in next to her drawings. I was instantly interested because she had 7 uncles and aunts and I had only a very little idea about their names and faces. Ella’s mum, my daughter was not married at that time and I wanted to be up to date and to know all the names of her partners family..
I had photos from my family, my mothers and my fathers sides and from my wife’s parents, her sister and brother in law and their children and so on. I suggested a workshop with the people who stayed in the house over Christmas and for everybody to bring photocopies. I got as many printouts as I needed and suggested cutting out pictures to create family branches, one sheet for each branch. The cutting and glueing took a while but leading to acceptable visual results.
Three year old ELLA’s, drawing of her family
The Family tree, a co-product of Ella and her mum after our workshop, with the grandparents, included, at the bottom.
This very clever family branch of the Grohmans, designed by my sister in law was not meant to be a branch but part of a circle going back to the parents.
This section could also be seen like a piece of cake or like the drawing underneath.
Like my sketch of my daughters partner family, the Nixons.
In a letter from September 2023 my sister in law tells me that she never thought of family branches. She sent me variations of her workings instead. Here – leaving her parents out – she starts from herself and her brothers and sisters with their partners and their wedding dates. These dates, so I see it, are the coming together of commitments to each other and to the wider family with a view to the future. It is not so much the genetics that count but the circular bond that holds their future life together. The card design can stand up and be seen like a protective umbrella. The “branches” then could be imagined from above. I am reminded on tree lines growing from year to year, the youngest are on the outside, as it would be with children.
My sister in law demonstrates this with a photo of a section through an agave. This is her title: Family in the world, I am inside there. She is 87 now.
My answer to her:
Dein Ansatz, mit den Paarungen zu beginnenvon denen aus sich die Familienmitglieder entfalten ist mir sehr einleuchtend. Es schließt die Verantwortung einer Paarung ein, zusammenzuhalten, selbst wenn die Kinder nicht genetisch gebunden sind, sondern gewählt wurden. Aus welchem Grund auch immer, das ZUSAMMENHALTEN zählt.
Die Essenz des Begriffes FAMILIE ist dann der ZUSAMMENHALT einer Gruppe, in diesem Fall einer Gruppe von Menschen. Und es sind die Außenbezirke einer Familie die mich interessieren und wo wir politisch gesehen am meisten versagen, da wo die Kinder sind.
My translation:
I like your decision to start your design with the weddings, as that is the time where you commit to your responsibility to bring up your children. And that is even if they are genetically not your own.
What counts is the commitment to hold together. The essence is HOLDING TOGETHER as a couple but even more so as part of a complete family circle.
For me it is the edge of these rings at the outside of the circles that I am interested in.
Because as society that is were things go so easily wrong.
The forest not far from where I live has changed and looks like a bomb site.
On my walk I came across this tree trunk. It felt this is like a reminder on the death of a young strong man in a war zone where his life was cut short.
I reflected on the time we have, a long or a short life. As I walked along I thought about this example of a tree trunk I “met” for many years, as long as I have lived here, 35 years by now. No doubt It will survive me, just like an old gravestone. But it will in the end disintegrate as well. I am not sentimental about dying and the loss of memories.
The forest not far from where I live has changed and looks like a bomb site.
If this was a card I wouldn’t like it. It is too symbolic and sentimental.
I live from images and their meanings. Though, I am interested aswell in the reactions to that in and with others.
Branches inspire me.
Actions of branching out.
My own water colour painting in 2011.
A birthday present to Jo.
This sculpture for a community centre by John Merril, a friend of mine, represents a ‘family’ of people standing up together.
And a photo of our family holding together
And this is a family NIXON ‘support action’.
Here the wedding of my parents and us three sons growing up from there
My inspiring sister in law created this work about her family growing up
It took me 3 days to come up with a design nearer to fit my OWN criteria:
• How I grew up, married, had my first child, met my second wife, and had two more children
• how my son married and had two children and
• how my daughter had two children and then married in 2023.
The time scale on the left shows
at what time family high points took place
and how the family grew further away from me and that by now I am a grandfather with 3 children and 5 grandchildren
and that all this happened NEXT TO ME with people who are ALL VERY DIFFERENT INDIVIDUALS growing
up at different times and places during my life.
I am obviously unbelievably grateful, but … this is only a bird’s eye view and only represents the birth and growing up of individuals NEXT to each other.
This design is an attempt to draw a time scale of my life. It shows the births of me and my partners within the time from 1940 to 1945.
I moved to England in 1972.
With a gap of 25 years this scale marks the birth of my daughter, 7 years later the birth of my son and 8 years after that the birth of my second daughter.
In the time from 2009 to 2022 I became – rather late – the grandpa, called gramps, of 5 grandchildren, living in three different places in England, In Shropshire on the border to Wales, in Lewes/Plumpton in Sussex and in Frome in Somerset
I like the idea of thinking about families as trees and branches. For me it suggests a family garden with plants growing in different ways and heights. This idea I then tried to envisage. I see the garden as a field with growing trees one next to the other.
My pixelated view of a tree from the Barn 2019.
AND THE ROOTS”
as essential part of trees
What barely happened in our workshop on Family trees is an exchange about the people represented on these
sketches, montages and in images.
At the time I simply didn’t think about it. It would need another session or revised workshop – with cakes, drinks and chats …
Now I think
a game or board game of some kind could be useful, to stir the wheel.
I see the need to stimulate some story lines. For that to happen print outs could easily be made into playing cards.
In other words MY workshop has not finished here ! It has not even really started yet.
And then other thoughts:
When Ron, one member of our Four Corner Films group, wrote in a letter 8 years after the group was formed, that in this group, of 4 very different people, he felt that he had become part of a family?!
What did he really mean?
He told me that he had unexpectedly become part of this family that, as a gay man, he otherwise wouldn’t have had.
What was “family” for him?
The meaning of family can be very broad, and can relate to the specific emotional needs of many people, and many different situations and groupings.
I test my own needs on these thoughts
Let’s start from here!