Every family experiences tragedy. Some families sweep it under the rug. Others, like Roy B. Davis, embrace it.
Stories of tragedy were passed down in whispers in the Davis family. Roy B. Davis, Jr., heard them from his mother in fragments, including the mystery around his grandfather's murder, grandmother's suicide, and favorite cousin being killed by a German sniper in WWII.
Using insights gained from psychotherapy, Davis began creating commemorative art objects that depict the emotional history of his family. The objects are seven half-size coffin sculptures, each containing elements of a specific family member's life and death.
Coffins felt like an appropriate focal point for several reasons, one being the subject matter around untimely or tragic deaths. But Davis has been in the coffin business for a while.
The family business, Bert & Bud's Vintage Coffins, is now run by Davis's two songs, Andrew J. and Noah C., in Berkeley, California. The sons carry on the artistic and comedic tradition exemplified in Bert & Bud's slogan: "We put the fun back in funerals."
Because while Davis has created a lifetime of multimedia artwork, he has since suffered severe memory loss. He cannot reel off details of his family history, nor can he recall creating his artwork unless directly looking at it. He's joined in the studio by Constance Alexander, who helps him with memory recall.
Davis learned much of his family's history after his parents were deceased. He attributes that to "the way life was then. Things happen, and you move on. I didn't really catch up with all that until I started digging around in letters and things like that."
In addition to letters, Davis found information about his family through newspaper clippings from the early 1900s. Alexander recalls Davis's account, saying, "[Roy's grandfather] was at this July 4th baseball game in Perryville, Kentucky. There was an altercation with two brothers. [Roy's grandfather] spoke to one of them about their behavior, and a fight ensued."
"[The grandfather] pulled a knife on the young man. The brother of the young man ran in from the field. He had been at-bat, I guess," Alexander says. "The brother said to him, 'kill him.' And the other brother raised his bat and hit [Roy's grandfather] on the head."
Alexander explains that Davis propped a half-size coffin up on baseball bats to pay homage to his grandfather. The top of the coffin is lined with clippings of the newspapers of that time about what happened."
"Come at once, Fannie is dead" is on display at the Wrather Museum on Murray State's main campus now through October 26th. The exhibit can be viewed during normal Wrather business hours of 8:30 am to 4 pm.
