jill poyourow

The Altadena Ancestral Cabbages

UPDATE after the fires:

I moved to Altadena when I was 30. And painted for almost 8 years there. It was a magical existence. Much of what you will see on my website was painted in a backyard garden people-door garage that I lovingly made into a funky painting studio that suit me very well and where I hosted some of the best and brightest of the 1990s LA artworld….just so many fond memories. It was decimated. My heart goes out to my former community - the people of Altadena, who continue to make it such an incredibly special place.

Thanks for reading this and please read more just below:

I was living in the sweetest little 1916 craftsman bungalow just off Fair Oaks Avenue in Altadena, California when I painted the Ancestral Cabbages. It was our first rental in the LA area after my graduation from Calarts.

In Altadena, my then-husband (a former farmer) tended a very lush and fertile backyard garden, a labor of love for him. But for me, I saw these heads coming out of the earth as somehow embodying the energy of the Eastern European ancestors whom I had never known but wondered about. I was familiar with images dating back to the old country of some of these blood relatives, thanks to the invention of photography preceding/coinciding with their wave of immigration. In previous works I thought a lot about theories of ancestor worship in different cultures throughout history. Cabbage Patch dolls were popular at the time and one of my niece’s toys. This was also the time in my life when I began trying to begin a family of my own, and was suffering miscarriages. If I had been a wife and mother in the old country, I would have most likely had seven children, like the seven cabbages in the series. Somehow the idea that my ancestors’ souls were co-mingling with my not born childrens’ souls, as I dug in the garden behind my house, provided me comfort and some sense of meaning while I painted from life these portraits of a staple food of my ancestors.