Palimpsest Portrait: Plate 1

My research at UIC pays attention to hauntings and engages with the ghosts of closed schools in Chicago, building off Ewing’s (2018) work. I document the traces left behind from schools that no longer exist and create palimpsest portraits, or collages of archival data through a photo-transfer method. This serves as a way to analyze the data while reflecting on my experiences as a parent, an educator, and now a researcher connected to Chicago Public Schools. The arts-based methods afford unique insight and an invitation for others to pause and reflect. I argue that closed schools seem to be erased, but linger as palimpsests, permeating the present-day educational spaces in material ways that require re-examination. These palimpsest portraits constitute one stage of my dissertation (portraiture-as-process), will serve as a catalyst for community conversations, and ultimately aim to inform the writing of aesthetically rich portraits (portraiture-as-product) of the closed schools, modeling off Lawrence-Lightfoot’s work (1983; 1997). Plate 1, 2021, plexiglass plate with photo transfer, acrylic medium, 12” x 12” x 0.12”. Includes news images and excerpts from public hearing transcripts when Andersen School was closed and LaSalle II Language Academy was phased into the same building in 2008-2011.