Eldersigns is an age-based storyboard project that follows Kindersigns, focusing instead on seniors. Since moving to San Francisco, Josefa Vaughan had continued to grow her storyboard collection. On visits to her mom in a nursing home, she would talk with different residents and ask them to create their own. Exploring mortality rather than childhood, Vaughan then began her second storyboard-based composition.
Serendipitously, the reclaimed aluminum offset litho sheets gathered for the project had previously been used to print brochures for the California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC). Given the resonance with her subject matter, she decided to let certain original images show through. As this ink is fugitive and will fade, unlike the archival paint used by the artist, the materials themselves investigate the passing of time. Eldersigns marks not only a complementary subject to Kindersigns, but another proof of concept for Vaughan’s developing storyboard-based art form.
Year
1988-1992
Exhibition
Bechtel International Center, Stanford University
Collaborators
Elders at assisted care facilities in Houston and the Bay area who created storyboards
Materials
Oil on re-purposed aluminum offset litho panels
I had been drawing all my mother’s friends for her to put on the wall of her room so she would have a souvenir of them when they died. She, having been the longest living in that place for 10-years. One day, when I showed my mother’s friend the drawing I made of her, she exclaimed with horror, “but my hair is not white, it’s black!!”
It struck me, this sense of violence in portraiture when the subject does not recognize their mortal looks. While another modern artist might respond by moving towards abstraction, I found a different solution in Eldersigns.
– Josefa Vaughan
Contrasting a particular storyboard with indecipherable script evoking a heart monitor, is one produced by a woman 30-years her senior who wrote a message of gratitude in clear block letters.
– Josefa Vaughan
