Project Description

My artwork explores the theme Home through a series of patio barbecue photographs featuring my parents and my son. My trips back to Iowa to visit Mom and Dad were especially meaningful because I did not live near them. During summer visits, Dad would fire up his small charcoal grill to cook steaks or chicken for supper. The backyard patio became a favorite place for me to take photographs. It was simply everyday life, but I wanted to record the small things—my father tending the grill, my mother preparing food, and my son watching and learning.

Home is a place, but it is also a state of mind. It lives in rituals, relationships, and memories that continue to shape us long after the people we love are gone. My parents are no longer alive, so these photographs have become more precious; they are records of presence, love, and time.

As public art in Kansas City—a city nationally known for its barbecue culture—the series connects private memory to collective identity. Barbecue here is more than cuisine; it is ritual, pride, and gathering. By bringing my family moments into the public sphere, I invite viewers to reflect on their own definitions of home—not only as a physical place, but as an accumulation of shared experiences that endure.

The four photos are in chronological order, left to right, revealing evolving family dynamics and subtle humor surrounding the backyard grill. 

“Steak barbecue, 9/1996”

“Barbecue chicken, 5/1998”

“Charcoal lighter fluid, 6/2004”

“Learning to barbecue, 5/2008”

Medium

Photos, pigment inkjet

Location

Armour Southbound KC Streetcar Shelter

Bio

Deanna Dikeman is an American photographer whose work explores themes of family, time, memory, and the emotional resonance of everyday life. She is best known for her long-term project “Leaving and Waving” in which she photographed her parents for 27 years as they stood in their driveway in Sioux City, Iowa, waving goodbye at the end of her visits. 

Dikeman graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in Biology and an M.S. in Management. She has photographed her midwestern family and surroundings since 1985, when she left a corporate job to try a photography class. She received an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship in 1996, the United States Artists Booth Fellowship in 2008, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography in 2023. She has two books published by Chose Commune: “Leaving and Waving” in 2021 and “Relative Moments” in 2024.  Photographs from “Leaving and Waving” have been exhibited at festivals, museums, and galleries in 14 countries: Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA.

Website | deannadikeman.com 

Instagram | @deannadikeman