This print was taken from a vintage photo from the late 1960s in Lufkin, in the deep East Texas. My uncle and cousin playing baseball in my great-grandmother’s yard, dodging pine trees to catch the ball. Somewhere in front of them, there must have been a batter and a photographer. No cameras were harmed as far as I know!
This piece is based on another Farm Security Administration photo by John Vachon. It shows four Southland paper mill workers and their car share vehicle. I like that it also shows their work gear and lunch boxes. Reminds me of how my dad used to dress for work and the lunch box he carried for so many years. My mom always packed my dad’s lunch (or dinner, if he was on an evening or overnight shift) and used to put Mrs. Baird’s fruit pies in there for dessert. So, when I see these types of lunch boxes, I think of fried pies and those big metal clasps snapping shut.
The paper mill has been a theme in my work before and probably will be again. As I’ve mentioned, it had a huge effect for Lufkin and surrounding areas, too. It was one of the largest employers for generations, and when it shut down, it didn’t necessarily tank the economy because I feel at that time the town’s economic drivers were changing anyway. But it definitely caused a shift and left a lot of people displaced, professionally. It is integral to the larger East Texas story.
“LYLAS (Love You Like a Sister), 1940s” Acrylic Monotype by Stephanie Khattak. 18 X 24 on paper.
My parents had the most seventies wedding ever. White shoes on the men, sherbet-toned bridesmaid dresses for the ladies, complete with floppy hats and flower baskets instead of bouquets. But it worked for this East Texas wedding portrait in 1973 and in some festival/Midsommar aesthetic circles it still works today. They got married roughly a month after my mom graduated high school, which was common for the time. I came along three years later. They’re still together, their health has been good. They lead quiet lives in a nice home with a bunch of cats and a dog so spoiled we’ve taken to calling him Little Lord Poncho. It hasn’t been perfect because what is? But they got their happily ever after.
I’ve started working on larger monotype prints, which is fun. It takes a little bit of problem solving, since I don’t have a large format printer and wouldn’t want to spend money to have something printed professionally that’s just going to be a reference piece. So, in order to get the photo large enough, I open Adobe Acrobat and print as a poster, which enlarges across multiple sheets of paper. I put them together sort of like a puzzle under my large plate (or plates if the finished product will be larger than 16X20.) It is a little extra work, but I love how these look at a larger scale when I can bring out more of the entire scene.
This monotype print is taken from a vintage East Texas photo of my maternal great-grandmother’s grandmother, Ann. There have been Ann’s in the family ever since, including me. My father’s sister is also an Ann, so the name does double-duty for both sides of the family.
Elizabeth “Ann” was born in 1858 and died in 1948, so of course there aren’t many people left in my family who have direct memories of her. But she’s the originator of the “Panther Tales” that have been told to my great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and me, and everyone remembers those. When she was young and living on Renfro Prairie in East Texas, it seemed like there was a panther behind every tree, waiting to slash someone. She’s kept generations scared straight for a hundred years – none of us ever went far into the woods, and as we still occasionally hear panthers scream in the night there, we are right to stay away!
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