'Mom Updates': Son honored late Tavares mom with postmodern photos and chapbook

Tavares resident Grace Wingate would tell her son, “I’m one tough cookie” during their final days together.

An unconventional artist, humorist and “minor '80s cult figure,” Bruce George Wingate chronicled the last bit of time he spent with his mom in photos, social media and a unique chapbook.

Now 60, the elder punk rocker had moved to Tavares in 2017 to care for his mom after his father died. During that time, Grace became an internet sensation via Bruce's social media posts that he called "mom updates."

He'd document brief conversations with her on social media, accompanied by photos of their daily activities, which often included going shopping and running bank errands.

In an endearingly unconventional, postmodern way, he shared his affection for his mom's quirky observations and no-nonsense attitude, which captivated friends from all over the world.

Bruce's friends and acquaintances who knew him from his various bands also learned about the formidable force that was Grace Wingate. You could say she developed a fanbase.

"She would often say, 'I'm very popular on social media,' " Bruce said with a laugh about his mom.

"She was very kind, but she wasn't a pushover," Bruce added. "My mom was the original housewife of New Jersey, but she also had several jobs. When I was a kid, she worked at a toy factory, so I had more plastic boats and cars than I knew what to do with."

Grace and her husband raised their children in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, where George was a police officer for 26 years. After he retired, he and Grace moved to Tavares in 1992, the same year their son Bruce moved to Danbury, Connecticut.

"When we were visiting my grandmother in a hospital once, a man came into the room and had taken her purse while she was at the nurses station," Bruce recalled. "My mom, barely 5 feet tall, chased after this large 6-foot man and got that purse back."

While living in Florida, Grace an active member of Union Congregational Church. She passed away in November 2022, and Bruce has since moved back to Connecticut.

"I never, never showed her face. I just showed her from behind in photos. ... When I posted a picture of her shopping, my friends and everyone were like, 'Oh, that's so funny' 'cause moms love Kohl's."

Bruce once joked to a Connecticut newspaper that his photos showed Grace"dwarfed by American consumerism."

In 2020, Marc Fischer of Public Collectors Press in Chicago (known for his Hardcore Architecture series) published a two-color Risograph chapbook of "Mom Updates" with Grace’s consent.

A copy of the book is now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art's Library.

In Bruce's photographs, Grace appears tiny but determined, going about her business, said a representative of Still River Editions in Connecticut. "Bruce’s photographs of his mother blend documentary portraiture and the American landscape, in the tradition of photographers like William Eggleston," said a press release from Still River Editions in Connecticut, a Danbury gallery where Bruce recently showed his works.

You can order the "Mom Updates' chapbook and learn more about Bruce and Grace Wingate at halfletterpress.com/mom-updates.

This article originally appeared on Daily Commercial: Punk rocker's pics provide glimpses of a Tavares mom's final years