In the meantime, CPR has become nomadic, using Cleveland State University’s darkroom and various other organizations’ galleries for its shows. This month, it’ll be taking over Praxis Fiber Workshop’s Gallery in the Waterloo Arts District for Lakewood artist Mary Defer’s Secret Family, an experimental narrative project. It’ll open during Walk All Over Waterloo.

 The show is based on letters found by Defer’s father after his mother Betty’s death that appeared to reveal that a mystery man named Jack was the grandmother’s father. Defer used that hidden history to explore generational trauma in the Appalachian region.

“Traveling to West Virginia, I used a panoramic camera to create evocative black & white images depicting sites where I surmise Betty and Jack’s lives intersected,” says Defer. “The larger film surface area was crucial, because after developing the rolls, I engaged in a process of controlled destruction by strategically burning parts of the negatives and then rephotographing them.”

She says the strategic is a visual representation of social censorship. “By investigating what was once confidential, I both counter and highlight the ‘slow violence’ of social stigmas.”

Defer also incorporated materials foraged in Ohio and West Virginia in her pieces.

“I printed images of the letters themselves onto cotton sateen using cyanotype chemistry, and toned the fabric with natural dyes from buckeye, oak, and sumac,” she explains. “The inclusion of the cyanotypes, delicately stitched onto vintage table runners, brings an intimate sense of domesticity to the work, and encourages us to consider what we conceal in our own lives.” She also used plants as part of a stop-motion Super 8 short film, incorporating moss, sweet pea and yarrow, in a work that suggests the role of Super 8 film in capturing family histories.

The show will be open from 5-8pm on Friday January 3 and will be on view through March 14. Learn more here.