MEMORY PROJECT Part 2: Shreds
Bush Barn Art Center Focus Gallery
Salem Oregon
May 5 - June 3, 2023
Memory Project Part 2: Shreds addresses issues of memory by laying bare the artist’s tug-of-war with an over-abundance of saved and collected materials that document 60-plus years of life experiences. Memories are stored in shreds of letters and documents. Photos are woven into tapestries of remembrance. The process of transformation is a celebration of a story and at the same time a reckoning that the past is ephemeral.
See Memory Project Part 1: Timeline for the precursor to this project.
There are those of us who are packrats, we squirrel away every bit of evidence that we have lived. We hang on to letters from friends, pictures from school, notebooks and journals that contain intimate jottings, keepsakes and mementos that contain memories of experiences that shaped who we are. And for artists, who see everyday ephemera as fodder for art, fighting the hoarding impulse is a tug-of-war.
Then we age, and wonder what will become of the trove that we cherish.
It is time to do something with all this stuff. Shelves are bursting with binders and notebooks and boxes of carefully archived documents and artifacts that chronicle my connection to the memories of the past. Now that I am well into my 6th Decade I feel an urgency to address it all — yet it is difficult to let it go and still maintain the memories that shaped me.
Will I forget who I am/was if my stuff is gone?
In Memory Project: Part 1: Timeline, began the process of displaying my memories in physical form in an effort to begin to divorce myself from them. I created a timeline of sorts, loading the gallery wall with the story of my life dating as far back as a pamphlet from an infant formula company that was given to my mother when I was born, to the then current exhibition announcement. As a last-minute addition, shredded documents were flung, confetti-like at the base of the display adding to the celebratory feeling of the installation.
Each shred holds a memory.
The transformation process continues and intensifies with Memory Project Part 2: Shreds. Postcards, transit passes, credit and ID cards, journal and diary pages, date books, letters from people I do and don’t remember and other ephemera have new incarnations. Some shredded, some sliced and rearranged, they reflect their impact on my life but their preciousness is diffused into art. Distilled into remains, they are still imbued with memories but perhaps closer to a form that is easier to let go. Maybe by Memory Project Part 10.
