Erika
Myers-Bromwell
condition
My
work is centered on the embodiment of emotions such as pain, worthlessness,
helplessness, entrapment and isolation.
In the work I am attempting to make emotions both aesthetic and physical.
In the scenes that I have depicted, the forebodingness and the generality
of both the scene and the figures allow emotion to remain universal. The figures are general because they are made from abstracted
everyday materials. I work with
paint, wire, nylon, rope and wood to create these physical conditions of emotion.
Similarly, I manipulate these materials and utilize them in non-traditional
ways. Cutting, stretching, and sewing nylon
stockings around wire armatures for example create my sculptural figures.
The
physical characteristics of objects including their structure, their general
use, and the stigmas that categorize them are important in my work. Nylon stockings, for instance, create
a both sense of constriction and insecurity about ones body. Made from translucent, thin, elastic material,
stockings take on similar characteristics of skin. Skin is a somewhat weak natural constraint.
Conversely, wire is strong, malleable, and definitive.
The steel wire I use as the armature for my figures takes on the anatomical
characteristic of bone in my figures. It defines the body's shape and gives it strength.
It interacts with the nylon, connecting it at joints and crevices. Not only is this representational of an anatomical human, it
is also suggestive emotion. Emotional
strength consists of many things and depends on our weaknesses.
In this way the materials I use juxtapose
with each other and work together. The translucency of the nylon, as the figure's weakness is
juxtaposed against the strength that it gives the figure when it is connected
to the wire. Like both body and
mind that collaborate in order to disperse strength and weakness. On parts of my figures, nylon seems to
take over the bodies, emphasizing the ability of weakness, helplessness, and
isolation that can overtake the mind.
On other parts the nylon is lacking, revealing only the strong wire
structure.
The
physicality of the materials I use is not the only element essential to my
work. I place my figures, even
my painted figures in dark, foreboding environments. I use the placement to add in the figures mental and physical
stress in order to evoke their emotions. Though the figures in my paintings are not physically similar
to my sculptures, their positions and the mood that their environments create
work with the emotions and the metaphysical senses that I am attempting to
illustrate. In fact, they are similar to depictions of religious and political
painting from history in the composition and use of color.