Jerstin Crosby

Work-in-Progress Series: The Ghosts I Know

For the past several years I have been planning, researching, sketching and preparing for a series of paintings based on Kathryn Tucker Windham’s seminal book of folklore, “13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey”. In 2023, I was honored to receive a Snapdragon research grant from the Raleigh-based arts organization VAE. The funding for Snapdragon is provided to VAE from the Andy Warhol Foundation. These funds provided me with the ability to visit all thirteen ‘haunted’ sites that are included in Windham’s book. I am interested in these stories as they relate to a broader folklore tradition and what ghost stories say about the culture where they originate. Are they meant to be warnings, a way of policing cultural norms, or echoes of generational trauma stemming from centuries of enslavement, Jim Crow and institutional racism?

This pilgrimage was split into two trips that took me from Dothan, where I was raised, to Mobile, up through the black belt and as far north as Courtland, east of Muscle Shoals, where the infamous Fame studios is located. My research channeled through many small towns like Newton, Demopolis, Old Cahaba, the short-lived state capital, now an outdoor museum. I also went to Carrollton, and saw the “face in the courthouse window”, perhaps the most widely-known Alabama ghost. I touched history, listened to locals, documented the sites and collected samples from each place like red clay, oyster shells, Spanish moss, and magnolia flowers which I stored in brown paper bags labeled with each location. What I will do with these samples is TBD, but I find it beneficial to go to the source and see for myself the textures and the metadata of a place.

In addition to the full exhibition, I am interested in hosting events in the towns where these stories originate. On my trip, I made contacts at some of these locations, like Betty, one of the caretakers of the Pickens County Courthouse. These events could include storytelling, music and one of the works from this series.

It’s important for my work to reflect my upbringing in southern Alabama—a source I continually revisit to understand my experiences and ground my practice. By challenging the one-dimensional stereotypes of the South, my work introduces a more nuanced and personal perspective rooted in my upbringing.

I approach my work intuitively, drawing out forms and allowing narratives—such as death, folklore, archetypes, and class—to emerge. Each piece evolves through a process of reflection, where marks and gestures develop into narratives that resonate with my life or external influences, like literature. While I embrace storytelling, I include self-referential moments—marks, textures, or layers that remind the viewer of the painting’s materiality and disrupt a purely narrative reading. The Ghosts I Know series examines southern ghost tales, contemplating the bond between haunted spaces and the spirits that inhabit them. Through this interplay, I wrestle with the symbiotic relationship between figure and space, reflecting how environments shape lives and vice versa.

By merging southern folklore with abstract narrative techniques, my work contributes to ongoing dialogues about place, memory, and regional identity in contemporary art.