PROJECT PROPOSAL

Le Voyage

ARTISTS

Ed Ruscha’s crisp black and white photography coupled with the innovative ways in which he uses text have influenced my concept of narrative. http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/artists-a-z/R/16671/artist_name/Ed%20Ruscha/record_id/2411

Catherine Mosely’s layers of multi media collage show the depth and complexity of her narrative. http://www.catherinemosley.com/html_site/collages.html

Edgar Degas once said, “It is very well to copy what one sees, but it is much better to draw what one sees no longer except in memory.” http://www.edgar-degas.org/

PROPOSALI have recently been learning a bit about my family’s history. For my project I would like to map out the voyage that my French Canadian Ancestors took from Northern Quebec all the way to Massachusetts with a few stops along the way. I will include with the stops the language change when my family became Anglophone and stopped speaking French. Many people do not know that there are parts of northern Vermont and Main that still have French-speaking communities. I would like to revisit two of the projects that we have done this semester. I would like to create a map of the different destinations of my ancestors in illustrator. I am going to use a vintage looking map of the United States and Canada as it used to be in the early eighteenth century. I think it would be interesting if the maps changed with the change of time, like the vintage map morphs into a more modern one as the timeline progresses. However, I am not entirely certain how I can accomplish that as of yet. I would like to incorporate elements of montage into this project. However unlike the first project that we did I am going to physically (not digitally) incorporate different pieces into this work. I would like to use a few printmaking techniques to add to the depth and texture of the map.

My other narrative would follow a similar concept but follow the story of Evangeline as presented by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I would map out the different points that the Acadians stopped along the eastern coast of the United States. Evangeline is the story of the first major deportation based on their language and religion, when the British ruthlessly forced all of the French speaking Acadians out of the east of Canada. They separated the men from the women and sent them off on boats. Many of them sailed along the east coast which is the reason why you can find towns with French names like “Havre de Grace”. They traveled all the way down to Louisiana where the Acadians became “Cajuns” and the tomb of Evangeline rests today. 

ACADIANS ALONG THE EAST COAST

Q UEBECO IS IMMIGRATION 1840 -1930