Smedley Drive

Smedley Drive is the street my mother grew up on in a house built by my late grandfather in rural Pennsylvania. I asked my grandmother to draw the house on Smedley Drive by memory. She kept redrawing the floor and roof, over and over again—omitting details she couldn’t remember. As my grandmother’s memory fades, I long to learn more about her life—and the culture I’ve always felt disconnected from. I’ve reconstructed her memories by hand-splicing 16mm home video footage from a family in Minnesota, personal home videos, and original footage and scratching it with a needle to create an animation.