Ancestral Resonance - Rod Lathim

“Ancestral Resonance”

Deconstructed Violin, Vintage ephemera, Neon

32” T x 9 ½” W x 7” D

Ancestral Resonance reveals the hidden interior life of a violin — a vessel where sound once resonated, where music shaped memories, and where the quiet stories of generations still linger. Deconstructed and suspended in colorful fragments, the instrument stands weightless atop a wooden base and a vintage typeset block, suggesting uplift, revealing, and the universal lineage carried within every object touched by human hands.

Inside its open chamber, relics of lived experience assemble like a visual chord of vintage objects long retired. These artifacts—objects of work, play, craft, and time—evoke the lives this violin may have accompanied: the music it offered, the rooms it once filled, and the hands that held it through triumph, sorrow, and ordinary days.

Encircling the instrument, a luminous freeform ribbon of cobalt and turquoise neon glass flows like an unbroken melodic line, its argon glow animating the piece with motion and presence. The light becomes a metaphor for the unseen resonance of lineage—a reminder that every note played reverberates beyond its moment, traveling through families, eras, and hearts.

Whimsical, nostalgic, and quietly profound, Ancestral Resonance invites viewers to consider the inner histories that objects carry, and the harmonies—heard and unheard—that continue to shape us across time.