The Word Is Not Lucky is a body of work first exhibited at Galveston Arts Center, November 19, 2022 – February 5, 2023.

Video still from *8/27/XX*, 2020, Single-channel HD Video, B&W, sound, 04:53 min

Eileen Maxson's exhibition, The Word Is Not Lucky, processes the flooding of her parent's home during a hurricane and her grandfather's passing two years earlier through an unlikely coincidence. Both events happened on her birthday, August 27.

In video and photo-based works, Maxson sifts through and wrings out images, media, physical "stuff," and memories, remaking them as probing, moving, and sometimes humorous portraits of her family. Maxson confronts herself and her parents with the material excess of American life while working to connect the dots between what they had and the forces of nature that took it away.

In Small Claims, a series of 304, 8.5 x 11-inch prints, Maxson recasts the pages of her parent's insurance claim into an epic, chronological accounting of family purchases from 1950 to 2017. Spanning the memorable to the mundane, this photographic typology encompasses a lifetime of lost possessions.

In the video My Mom Knows Her Stuff, Maxson blindfolds and challenges her mother to identify, by touch alone, her "tchotchkes" that survived the flood. From wine-drinking Christmas dolls to Santa's trash can filled with fake fruit, the exercise goads her mother's wit while she proves a close connection to her things.

In other works, Maxson takes a somber tack. The title work, The Word Is Not Lucky, is a video portrait of Maxson's father, recounting his compressed life story -- an archetypical picture of the Baby Boomer American Dream, underpainted by his own father's combat service during WWII and late-diagnosed PTSD. The video 8/27/XX finds Maxson searching for her grandfather's memories of war through a mini-DV tape that survived the flood.

Installation Views + Excerpts
Recording of Artist Talk
Galveston Arts Center website