Wednesday, January 30, 2013

altered memento...

I was gifted a box of 150 postcards with the death of my grandmother in 2006...it was one of those items within her few possessions that neither my mother or my aunt or uncle felt any immediate or extended desire to retain as a memory...if memory is the right word. I discovered early in my teenage years that relatives on both of my parents side held little sentiment for objects as a necessary trigger to the remembrance of past lives...my father's mother burnt several albums that contained photographs of his childhood years...with his death when I was 3 months old perhaps it is part of the reason why particular found photographs of my parents era are at times capable of evoking such an emotional charge when discovered...within my heritage mix I'm not certain if it is the stoic Irish catholic disposition or the detached Nordic spirit that equally retain a sensibility toward death that believed that no past life can ever be invoked in any truly meaningful way through things...in neither photograph, nor ring, nor suitcase, nor rosary beads, nor jewellery box, nor postcard, nor...as if everything does or is required to vanish with and into death...the de facto memento changes nothing...although remarkably both of these cultures are embedded with iconography that gesture and summon memories of the departed...both real and mythic...within my own being there is a half light of acceptance of such a notion...that half light has relinquished that collection of postcards to art...if that is the right word...the reasons for having done so begin to unfold in the studio at present..sp

  


3 comments:

  1. ah, that half light of visual memory... how evocative is that?

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  2. stitched together and written out with red lines...there is much here that evokes, is generalized from the particular. this may be the great strength of these pieces, their particular generality as we bring our viewing eyes to your rebuilt memories.

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  3. I've been back to see this post a few times now without leaving any comment. These images evoke a rawness in my memories.....I just can't quite see it though.

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