“Efface Embrace”

Rochelle Sumner & Will Kerner

8 x 10”: Photography and handwriting

ARTIST STATEMENT

The Bonnet Maker is an Old German Baptist Brethren (OGBB) woman who leaves her old order, plain community. The Bonnet Maker visual narrative combines photos, text, fragmentary writing, performance, and costume to weave a concept inspired by my OGBB great-grandmother Ida Mitchell Puffenbarger from Franklin, West Virginia (1868-1972). She lived a headship directed, head-covered, religious-order life. Headship prescribes a women’s purpose: to be subordinate to men.

In old order culture, believers live apart from mainstream society practicing deep self-denial and strict social distancing. Women conceal their hair and bodies to uphold community values of modesty and rigid gender roles. And they limit their behavior and take on roles signified by the dress.

Ida Puffenbarger’s handmade black wool bonnets were real. The Bonnet Maker’s bonnets are metaphorical. Coverings handed down through generations of women. And like many coverings, they are self-made. As I plunged deeper into The Bonnet Maker’s character, I discovered she was me.

Before Covid-19, The Bonnet Maker was an old order woman beginning to explore the world outside her confines. During the pandemic, she questions and explores her identity by looking further inward.

What began as one woman’s story about loneliness, isolation, identity, and longing has become a universal experience. Like the plain people, we are forced to confront emotional distancing and perhaps face a loneliness, isolation, and longing of our own.

Photographer Will Kerner and I collaborate and travel within Virginia and NYC. The Bonnet Maker’s journey is about un-bonneting.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Rochelle Sumner is an American visual storyteller, installation artist, performance artist, and conceptual artist living and working in Charlottesville, Virginia. She studied at Pratt Institute and The School of Visual Arts in New York City. Combining photos, writing, performance, and costume, Sumner weaves narratives about her experiences and those of her fictional characters. Sumner’s current project, The Bonnet Maker, created with photographer Will Kerner, examines vulnerability, identity, and shame.

To find out more about The Bonnet Maker, follow the Instagram (@thebonnetmaker) or website.

Will Kerner is a photographer and co-founder of Charlottesville’s Live Arts theater, Light House Studio, and LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph. He  earned a B.F.A. in Photography and Filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has photographed around the world, working with humanitarian aid organizations and pursuing self directed projects. He is drawn to abstract textures and blocks of color as compositional elements, using figures to bring the image to life. 

To see more of Will’s works, check out his Instagram (@willkerner), Facebook (@WillKernerPhotography), or website.