Shrine - Sam Joseph

When thinking about this project, I knew I wanted to make a shrine to my cousin Billy Morgan. 

Billy is my first cousin twice removed on my mother’s side and on her mother’s side. 

I now own a coat that once belonged to him from the time in his life when he lived in Chicago, but I never met Billy. I grew up hearing stories about him. 

Billy had been a part of the 101st Airborne Division during the Cold War, had been a member of Mensa, and had helped co-found IDC Real Estate in El Paso, Texas. In 1968, IDC moved to Chicago and partnered with Lasalle Real Estate, now Jones Lang Lasalle, one of the leading real estate service firms in America. At the height of his career, Billy owned Picasso's and lived an unimaginably lavish lifestyle. 

But he had a drug problem. His cocaine habit got so bad that his partners bought him out. He started working for a law firm. Over time he lost his money. He drank heavily and smoked constantly. 

He refused to marry the mother of his only child. 

He briefly lived at the YMCA and eventually moved into a friend’s apartment complex free of rent. 

In August of 2013, he died. His son buried him, and no one else knows where he is buried. My grandparents asked, and he refused to say.

But before I continue, I need to take a step back to talk about my family’s broader internal relationships. My immediate family, including grandparents, doesn’t really interact with our extended family. Too many relationships have been neglected, ignored, or otherwise lost. I don’t mean to trivialize my family’s internal disagreements, but, you see, Billy was different. Billy had fucked up so much and had strained those family relationships, but he was still a tall figure in that family. He was both a figure to live up to and someone whose flaws were meant to be learned, so as to avoid the mistakes he made. Billy’s not a familial symbol for the importance of money. He was a man who both positively and negatively affected the lives of friends and family.

I don’t want to memorialize Billy as an honorific title. I want to memorialize Billy as a bridge between my family’s own internal conflicts. This shrine isn’t about closure. It’s about remembering multiple pasts and my family’s own deep rifts through both the anger and joy Billy inspired.

In designing my shrine, I decided to prototype an abstract sculpture, something which could compel engagement through curiosity alone. I thought about the luminaria my family placed out on our front walkway every Christmas. I wanted to achieve the same balance between a mundane shell and a vibrant and living interior flame. 

Essentially, my shrine is a box divided into two inner chambers and a regular set of apertures. As a result of the shrine’s form, instead of evenly lighting the shrine’s internal chambers, a candle’s light runs into a middle divider with a hole cut into its core. So while light shines through both chambers, one is bright and the other is dim. Here, light and darkness contrast to mimic good and bad memories. Light shines through the shrine’s external holes to creates a spot light effect. What we as an immediate and extended family collectively remember has gaps and lacks contexts, but still penetrates our history.