My dad has been consumed in figuring out his family ancestry. After an extensive amount of research, and a pricey subscription to ancestry.com, he realized that he was 36% Scottish. This was exciting news to the man who is an avid viewer of the Starz show Outlander. We decided to trace our family back to the time and place in Scotland where the series takes its inspiration from. My grandfather came from a line of Bains, the family that immigrated to the United States. We were able to trace back through the Bains seven generations to the Mackenzies in the 1700 Scotland- the time period and familiy represented in the TV series. 

​

To represent this loose trace back inspired by a television show, I decided to go the traditional route of measuring our connection through wedding bands. In Outlander, one of the lead characters has a wedding band molded for his bride. The piece consists of 6 pairs of wedding bands representing our family line in a descending form hanging from a tree. The seventh ring represented is a single band, representative of my spot in our family lineage. My grandfather's middle name is Bain, and traced back 5 generations is our ancester Hugh Bain - who immigrated to the United States from Scotland. If we trace back through the tree starting at Hugh, we found that two generations before him was a marriage between a Bain and a Mackenzie, thus connecting me to the exact time and place of the setting of the show. 

​

The main theme of this piece is measuring my family connection to Scotland through marriages - as represented by the bands. The Outlander theme served primarily as inspiration for the aesthetics of the piece. I chose to descend them from a tree because I wanted it to be reminiscent of the standing stones at Craigh na Dun - the place where the lead character, Claire, transports back in time to 1743.

​

This piece ignited a sweet phone conversation with my dad, where we were able to talk about our family history in greater depth than I can tie to just Scotland. It was also fun to imagine myself as the great^7 granddaughter of a fictional TV family.