Baby Ruth One

Baby Ruth One uses glass plate negatives that were made by George C. Wheeler, my great-grandfather, in the first years of the 1900’s. An editor of Western Farm Journal, George was also an amateur photographer. These negatives are particularly treasured as they are the only images I've ever seen of my great-aunt Ruth as an infant and toddler.

These fragile bits of silver emulsion and glass traveled from New York to Manhattan, Kansas, then onward to Denver, Colorado during the depression, then to my Lake City, Colorado home, and most recently, back to my studio in Denver. As I handle them I’m profoundly moved by the realization that I'm working with objects previously handled by a man who died many years before I was born, but to whom I am genetically connected. My eyes read words written by this same man, and view images of a child who grew into a woman I loved and respected, a woman whose curious, hard-working nature, has impacted my life daily.