McWilliams Cemetery [video]

Although you wouldn’t know it from updates here at Jordan’s Journey, 2013 has been one of the busiest years of my life! Don’t worry, though–it’s all in a good way. Luckily for you Jordan’s Journey fans, I recently uncovered an almost-finished Jordan’s Journey video I shot in May 2012. I could not polish it off and share it with you for several reasons, and I had almost even forgotten it existed. But when I rediscovered the work in progress, I finally felt compelled to finish it. It’s a bit different from most Jordan’s Journey videos, and because of those differences, it was a more challenging video to shoot and is a bit rough in spots. But still, I’m glad to have made it.

My cousin and friend (we were friends way back before I even knew we were cousins) Christa McWilliams joined me to help document some history about the McWilliams Cemetery in West Armuchee. I couldn’t have done this video without her. It’s our attempt to tell the story about this significant cemetery, which is also a story about our families.

While I’m at it, let me update you on some of my other projects that have kept me busy this year…

In my role as Creative Director of New Lit Salon Press, we recently published our first anthology, titled Southern Gothic: New Tales of the South. If you enjoy short stories and visual art about the South, check it out. I designed and art directed the book.

I’ve also been hard at work on an even more exciting project. In March 2014, I will mount my debut solo museum exhibition. The show is called INTERSECTION and is a follow-up to the Jordan’s Journey project. There’s a lot of overlap between the two, but while Jordan’s Journey takes an explicitly genealogical and documentary approach to my art, INTERSECTION explores the more poetic side of my roots. The photo at the top of this page (shot the same day I shot the McWilliams Cemetery video) is included in the show. In addition to the exhibition, which will be at Massillon Museum in Massillon, Ohio, I will publish an exhibition catalog collecting the photography and some writing. If you’ve enjoyed Jordan’s Journey, you will want to get a copy of this new book. You can reserve your copy today by supporting my Kickstarter campaign. Also available through this Kickstarter is a special edition of my “We Are One People” article (which first appeared in Georgia Backroads) in the form of a boxed artist’s multiple and signed copies of the Jordan’s Journey book.

Jordan’s Journey was a labor of love that I never made a penny from (and never intended to–that’s not what it was about). Yet I racked up many expenses for producing the book, the blog, the videos, the lectures in Chattooga and Walker County, and the exhibition in Summerville. If you enjoyed any part of the project, I hope you will consider supporting my Kickstarter campaign as I take my work to the next level. No donation is too small, and every bit helps.