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Artist Statement: Abstract

In both my fall and spring work, I have been interested in addressing the possibilities of communication and sharing through interactive, community-based projects. I see sharing our own experiences and intimate sentiments as part of connecting in a meaningful way within a community, and I see this connection as a metaphor for our way of existing within the larger world.

I want to talk about community experience through individual experience: to allow people to access their own individual memories and then somehow add them up to become something larger. I decided, then, to ask a question of the other members of the St. Mary’s community, collect written responses to it, and present these responses in their collective manifestation. “What was it that you wish you had said?,” I asked my friends, my classmates, my professors, even people who are strangers to me but members of this community. The question is purposely vague and hopes to access a wide variety of memories. It is offered as an opportunity to attempt connection through written communication, and to metaphorically revise, to let out that which we had forgotten, been afraid, or not had a chance to say.  Making these thoughts tangible gives them weight and allows them to be experienced by a wider community; writing them down in one’s own hand encourages slowing down and thoughtful consideration. Handwriting is also a way of tracing the identity of its writer, a mark of our individuality. Thus, even as all the written responses come together to be one large form, they all retain their individuality and autonomy.

The facts that the project uses everyday materials, and that my own hand is minimal, are important to my intention. I want to blur lines between artist and audience and between art and life: to make an art that is not transcendent of “regular life,” but instead embraces it, and empowers viewer/participants. I am stepping back from the role of author and instead seeing myself as a facilitator. The project’s final visual manifestation is outside my control, and there is no clear end to the project: people can contribute as many times as they like, and the mass of paper can, in theory, grow indefinitely. I want to create an art completely dependent upon the active sharing—on a material, linguistic, emotional level—of a group of people.

I hope, through my work, to suggest the importance of communication for community-building, and to question notions of progress as synonymous with technological innovation rather than more effective interpersonal connection and understanding.

I hope, also, to spur viewers to question their own relationship to an artwork and to the gallery space, and to feel more empowered in relation to it.  In challenging the roles of the artist and the viewer, I am also trying to call attention to our roles and options as members of a community, that group we both depend on and affect. Finally, I hope to give people an opportunity to create something meaningful and share it with others, and possibly find some common ground.

Click here to see my full-length statement.