The concepts for American Girl War© were developed during a residency at Anderson Ranch, Snowmass Colorado which the Colorado Council for the Arts granted me in 1997. The fellowship enabled me to attend a week-long artist workshop in "Photographic Storytelling" led by Philip Brookman (Curator of photography and New Media from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC; and photographer Jim Goldberg, author of Raised by Wolves a national exhibition and book by the same name. From the ideas generated in this workshop I created American Girl War utilizing photographs taken almost exclusively from family photo archives. The images were digitally scanned and enlarged up to 1200 percent and printed on an Italian Océ® 9200 plotter. The resulting large format prints on five-foot by three-foot transparent acetate and translucent Mylar sheets were displayed on an original hanging system.