"Power ObJects"
Deborah Read
The materials I have chosen to work with in this exhibition are generally the old, the discarded, the outmoded, the fallen. You will find pieces of the schooner Sylvina Beale, an old tablecloth, my daughter’s shoe, a sail from our boat Artemis, the transom from a skiff, a cardboard box from our move, and many other bits of flotsam and jetsam that delivered themselves into my presence. I like to think of them as a type of ancestor; a vial of light from the past that has reached out their hands in the present and asked to be seen and heard. Their wordless knowledge emits a power from the unknown and the inconceivable. They have something to say to me, and perhaps others, something important about my life, about this life, about this moment we are inhabiting. As I sit with the object, inscribing it with words, marks, color, cutting, scrapping, gluing, and painting; the object and I go on a journey and together illuminate something important, something powerful, that is needed for myself, and possibly for someone else. They are offerings, gifts, power figures, vials of light, troublesome ancestors, ferrymen, grandmothers, and grandfathers, that reach out to us from the unknown and help guide us along the way.
Deborah Read
The materials I have chosen to work with in this exhibition are generally the old, the discarded, the outmoded, the fallen. You will find pieces of the schooner Sylvina Beale, an old tablecloth, my daughter’s shoe, a sail from our boat Artemis, the transom from a skiff, a cardboard box from our move, and many other bits of flotsam and jetsam that delivered themselves into my presence. I like to think of them as a type of ancestor; a vial of light from the past that has reached out their hands in the present and asked to be seen and heard. Their wordless knowledge emits a power from the unknown and the inconceivable. They have something to say to me, and perhaps others, something important about my life, about this life, about this moment we are inhabiting. As I sit with the object, inscribing it with words, marks, color, cutting, scrapping, gluing, and painting; the object and I go on a journey and together illuminate something important, something powerful, that is needed for myself, and possibly for someone else. They are offerings, gifts, power figures, vials of light, troublesome ancestors, ferrymen, grandmothers, and grandfathers, that reach out to us from the unknown and help guide us along the way.
Opening Night Reception!
