Baghdad Boxes
Baghdad Boxes/Sanctuaries
These works were shown in the exhibit Remains at DBerman Gallery in December 2008 and January 2009
The parts of birds, maimed by vehicles, or cats, or mishap, I have collected and placed in my studio for sometime. I watch them decompose, I finger the matted feathers and the lightest of bones. I am entranced by their delicacy and their vulnerability.
One day, some months ago I began to sew these parts onto fabric with beads and little stitches. I was thinking about Victorian hair art, an act of using hair from the dead in unique and exquisite designs to memorialize the lost loved one. I wanted to make these bones and feathers beautiful again, a kind of reliquary for the loss of flight and freedom.
It took me some time to understand that what I was doing was about the war. It could be, of course, about all war, but the horror and plight of American troops and the citizens of Iraq is so prevalent, so in our lives every day, that I was compelled to somehow make these pieces about this particular war.
And so I placed text, garnered from the articles in the New York Times that I read every morning, into the little drawers of the bejeweled boxes. In the sanctuary table pieces the drawers contain the remains of found birds bathed in salt. We all compartmentalize our feelings so that we may go on with the day; I leave my porch and fold up the newspaper. In this light I have given the viewer the choice to close the drawers and close the emotions the text or remains evoke.
I cannot suggest that these works will change anything or that I am making political art. I can only say that making these objects has been a meditative process for me and has at some level allowed a small sense of peace in my life. Perhaps it will give that same small gift to you as well.
July, 2007
These works were shown in the exhibit Remains at DBerman Gallery in December 2008 and January 2009
The parts of birds, maimed by vehicles, or cats, or mishap, I have collected and placed in my studio for sometime. I watch them decompose, I finger the matted feathers and the lightest of bones. I am entranced by their delicacy and their vulnerability.
One day, some months ago I began to sew these parts onto fabric with beads and little stitches. I was thinking about Victorian hair art, an act of using hair from the dead in unique and exquisite designs to memorialize the lost loved one. I wanted to make these bones and feathers beautiful again, a kind of reliquary for the loss of flight and freedom.
It took me some time to understand that what I was doing was about the war. It could be, of course, about all war, but the horror and plight of American troops and the citizens of Iraq is so prevalent, so in our lives every day, that I was compelled to somehow make these pieces about this particular war.
And so I placed text, garnered from the articles in the New York Times that I read every morning, into the little drawers of the bejeweled boxes. In the sanctuary table pieces the drawers contain the remains of found birds bathed in salt. We all compartmentalize our feelings so that we may go on with the day; I leave my porch and fold up the newspaper. In this light I have given the viewer the choice to close the drawers and close the emotions the text or remains evoke.
I cannot suggest that these works will change anything or that I am making political art. I can only say that making these objects has been a meditative process for me and has at some level allowed a small sense of peace in my life. Perhaps it will give that same small gift to you as well.
July, 2007
