Artwork Description
Travis Somerville – Family Reunion #1
Dimensions: 21 x 16.25″ paper
Year: 2004
Medium: 6-color lithograph mixed media
Edition: ed. 10/20
Deeply familiar yet nonetheless confrontational, Travis Somerville’s “Family Renuion” series disrupts nostalgia and memory, insisting on the idea that images and material objects are never removed from our present or future. Somerville uses vintage photographs of white children in poignant juxtaposition with painted or collaged symbols from southern African-American history. In these evocative works, the artist surfaces an implied history that confronts the viewer with the aesthetic power of America’s fraught past and myopic present.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Somerville grew up in various cities and rural towns throughout the South and along the Eastern seaboard. After a brief stint at Maryland Institute College of Art, he settled in San Francisco in 1984 where he attended San Francisco Art Institute. His work can be found in multiple collections, including the Achenbach Collection in California and the personal collection of actor Whoopi Goldberg.