Remembering the loved ones we've lost is a challenge as painful as it is rewarding. If you've ever tried to channel the memory of a life in all its complexity, beauty, many dimensions and details, you'll appreciate this stunning tribute by illustrator and animator Gemma Green-Hope.
After Green-Hope's grandmother passed away, the artist inherited many of her belongings, ranging from books to to-do lists to clothing to little bits of string. Not knowing what to do with the intimate yet not-quite-useful materials left behind, Green-Hope incorporated her grandmother's possessions into a gorgeous memorial, in the form of a short film. In the video above, she paints a moving portrait of a woman filled with twinkling intricacies and contradictions, from her superstitious and religious beliefs to her smell of sandalwood and old books.
"My grandmother Elizabeth (or Gan-Gan as I called her) was a force of nature; she was wonderful," Green-Hope writes on Vimeo. "As a child she seemed to me like a visitor from another time or place. Her tiny terraced house in Bideford was full of treasures; hundreds of books, a medusa's head, Peter the Great's ivory letter opener, the caul of her mother tied up in blue ribbon, a tile stolen from the Alhambra, a silk blouse embroidered by nuns, deadly poison, beautiful Pre-Raphaelite artworks, a knife carved from the wood of HMS Victory, Granny Green's pince-nez, and diaries full of stories from a hard life well-lived."
After seeing Green-Hope's short, we don't just feel like we know Gan-Gan, we love Gan-Gan. Watch the beautiful tribute to a clearly magical woman above and let the happy tears flow.
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