Jan and Jack
A Portrait of Jan Kerouac, 2026, approximately 4.5 feet by 6 feet, archival ink jet on the pages of her book, Baby Driver, 1981.
and
A Portrait of Jack Kerouac with his Daughter, 2026, approximately 4 feet by 7 feet, hand-stitched laser prints on vellum of the archival image of Jack Kerouac holding his manuscript for On The Road (1957) with a superimposed quote from Jan Kerouac's 1981 Baby Driver.
Jan and Jack is an installation showing the famous Beat poet/novelist Jack Kerouac holding his
mythical scroll manuscript alongside his unknown daughter, and novelist, Jan Kerouac.
Jan Kerouac, daughter of Joan Haverty and Jack Kerouac, led a life more beaten down and filled
with wanderlust than her notorious namesake. This piece celebrates Jan, a lost voice of the post-Beat
generation. To know her now is to piece together the words she left behind. My reproduction of Jack holding
his manuscript scroll gives voice to Jan‘s words.
Jan‘s portrait is made in fragments, on a set of individual frames for pages of her book. Throughout the installation, her image sits atop her words, and viewers can read her book from the back side of the installation.
The archival image of Jack is reprinted on 8 by 10 inch sheets of vellum and sewn together with book binder‘s thread, rendering him fragile and ghostly.
