Sally Mann, interview NPR and how some art leaves bread-crumb trails back to the journey of our ancestors

Sometimes I write things on my blog that are sort-of messages posted to the future for my daughters to find, as a breadcrumb trail back to any lingering questions they may have about their mother.

Certainly, not all my blog posts are meant to be digital "messages in a bottle," but some are.  A few are.

It's just that in real life, if you stand too close to someone for too long, you can't see them as clearly.   Distance, time, and the addition of other voices, do help.

So, while they may have figured it out from my bookshelf already, there are two artists on the planet I feel speak in an emotional shorthand my heart can relate to the quickest: They are Sally Mann and Ellen Gilchrist.

Sally Mann is a visual artist, and American photographer.  Some describe her as an American (Southern) photographer.  She's best known for her large black-and-white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death. MORE ON SALLY MANN HERE

Ellen Gilchrist,. is an American novelist, a short story writer, and poet.  Gilchrist has often been compared to Southern writers such as Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, and Eudora Welty (with whom she studied) and she has been declared "a national treasure" by the Washington Post for her various works. She has received numerous awards for her novels, poetry, and memoirs, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Fiction. Gilchrist is known for writing complex heroines who overcome or embrace their oppressive settings. (ding, ding, ding!) Her work often deals with marriage, family, and dreams.


I hope that in the future my children will find the opportunity to spend some time with the work of these two artists to see why I feel that time will assist them in comprehending the pathways of their lineage.