Collapsible box with archival pigment & pressure prints and vinyl labels; archival pigment printed flextangles and pamphlet book
10” x 5.5” x 2.5”
2021
Fractured Fathers is a collaborative artists’ book created by Benjamin D. Rinehart from Appleton, Wisconsin, and Rachel Simmons from Orlando, Florida. The process began with a conversation between close friends about their complex relationships with their fathers, Jim and Terry. In the summer of 2020, during the first pandemic lockdown, they interviewed one another over video conferencing and transcribed the conversations. Their discoveries led to the creation of two flextangles and a third collaborative book based on the transcripts. For the flextangles, they used photos of their fathers augmented through digital manipulation and pressure printing. Everything was finalized during an in-person studio session in Appleton a year later. Through this process they found kinship between their common experiences and parallels between their family relationships and themselves.
– Rachel Simmons, Orlando, FL and Benjamin D. Rinehart, Appleton, WI