Misplaced

Misplaced features pieces of a variety of media and holds a very personal meaning for Lockman. She describes it as her Ancestry Project, born from her curiosity about her female ancestors. Being able to trace her male ancestry back multiple generations, Lockman began this project in order to fill in the missing names of her many great-grandmothers. In her own words, “I wanted to know about my paternal grandmothers, so I mapped out a fanned chart on my office wall of all the women on my paternal side back five generations: 31 women and 31 different surnames. I know nineteen of their names, but twelve are still lost to me. That map became the impetus for the current direction of my work.” 

One piece in particular, Agatha, is named for Lockman’s eighth great grandmother. Made out of 256 individually thrown ceramic forms, each piece is decorated with designs created in software then applied as decals using three different processes: screen-printed enamel glazes, iron oxide decals, and laser printed decals. The number of forms, 256, is very significant, as it is the number of grandmothers Lockman found in that entire generation; of which, Agatha was the only first name she was able to confirm. Agatha’s birth surname still remains unknown.