A Sketchbook of Memories

Abstract

The following arts-based autoethnography (BARONE, 2003; SLATTERY, 2001) reveals the author's emotional upheaval when her daughter leaves for a one-week camping trip with her father. The experience causes an ethnographic shift inward and outward on the personal and social aspects shaping her loss. She reflects on how she lives simultaneously in a culture of independence and a culture of dependence. Multiple layers of consciousness cause her to revisit her daughter's sketching albums. In doing so, she finds enormous peace and comfort by reflecting on the drawings. In the end, she creates both a picture book of memories and a movie (http://www.youtube.com/v/WFGTUP6PdKY&hl=en) that becomes a manifestation of performative social science in order to "look towards means of (re)presentation that embrace the humanness of social science pursuits" (JONES, 2006, p.67). By creating the art-based autoethnography, she is able to cope with missing her daughter as she resonates with memorable insights and triumphs. Overall, the author discovers how creating both the sketchbook and movie heightens the transformative nature of autoethnographic research. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0802400