This morning I took down my solo show, A Nursery Rhyme for You, salvaging the work from near destruction after a pipe leak at the gallery. It came down a day early so there is a slight chance that you hoped to go to the gallery but were thwarted by an unexpected closure, or perhaps you live far away and weren't able to telepathically commute for the show. And so, I'm going to attempt to create a little bit of a virtual sense of the show here. I've included installation shots and each of the images from the show. The prints are 20"x30" and were framed in white wood without a mat or glass so they feel a bit like tangible objects one might enter into. A Nursery Rhyme for You is an umbrella project that encompasses several sub-sets of story threads, many of which have multiple images and stand alone with a more specific theme. This is an edited version of what someday will be a larger book project...ooo there I said it...someday a book project!
During the duration of the show I gave an artist talk that I sheepishly mentioned to no one, hoping nobody would show up so I wouldn't have to speak. But in the end about ten people came and we had a lovely and lengthy conversation about the involved stories behind many of the images. Following is my intro to that conversation:
In childhood we are both susceptible to the world around us and more easily able to delve into our imaginations, sometimes unable to differentiate the two or more often using our imagination to help us make sense of what is real. As adults we retreat into a world of fantasy to see more deeply into the human condition, but also to escape the horrors of it or at least make it more palatable. Story and narrative are an essential part of our ability to relate to one another, we seek refuge in story or share a story to explain something. It is the power of imagination and story that I am most captivated by and eager to delve into. As an adult I reflect back on my own childhood imagination and how it enabled me to piece together an understanding of the world, how it made mundane experiences enjoyable. I long for that space of existing on the cusp of imagination and reality. The raw sense of aliveness that it provides.
I feel as if having children has given me a second chance at accessing the childhood imagination. And perhaps as an adult I romanticize what it was to wander aimlessly through fields imagining myself as Laura Ingles Wilder or those hours spent sitting huddled with my sister in my great-grandmother’s attic oggling her padlocked steamer trunks, fantasizing about the possible ballgowns within or all those trips to The Met, Cooper-Hewitt and Guggenheim where I’d pretend the museum was my home. I wished so hard for each of these threads of imagination to be real and now in some ways, I bring that same sense of hopeful possibility into my making today. I want for these moments to be real. And it is my fear that children today are so overstimulated and busy that there isn’t room for the expansive space needed to unleash the imagination to its fullest capacity.
This series, A Nursery Rhyme for You, started from my knee jerk luddite response to contemporary culture and certain parenting choices. I am heartbroken by how often young children are handed a device or screen to keep them busy. I was raised in a household without a television. As a child of the 70’s and 80’s I could not converse with my peers about much of popular culture, but I created a world for myself to substitute for the world of television. It lacked a certain social currency that I continue to struggle with today when it comes to making conversation, but in this denial I found myself. Today it is not that I shun all access to technology for my own kids, but rather I try to help guide constructive use of it and allow time and space for them to access their deepest imagination, to explore the world as they wish for it to be.
In this era where our lives are overflowing with stimuli, keeping the brain ever engaged, I wonder if we are hindering access to our deepest creative selves. In my experience, my ideas come when my brain is given space to mull, to turn an idea over and over until it is honed, a smooth stone shinning clearly before me. As an artist I want to create the space to connect to one’s own imagination without technology, to cultivate the possibility of a more magical existence while also attempting to impart an honest sense of the world we live in today. I want, amidst the challenges and pain of a troubled world, for children to be able to imagine themselves beyond their own existence. I want to create opportunities for each of us to step into a story that is not our own, to empathize with another, to dig into a possible experience more deeply, to both dwell on and delete some of the darkness in any given scenario, to try on a moment or a feeling for size, to understand what it might be like to exist in that portal to another reality, to learn from it, but also leave it behind, as if in a dream.
I find inspiration in dreams, fairytales and nursery rhymes, the natural world and current events. I am an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction and through narrative feel a greater connection to the world around me. It is my hope to create narrative fragments that open the possibility of expanded narratives and imagination for others, each image a stand alone snippet that can be strung together, gathering a sense of the possible stories of any given life. A Nursery Rhyme for You is my love letter to motherhood, childhood and the possibility of imagination.
Thank you for taking the time to wander in my world for a minute.