Entanglements
Formed in Entanglement : Marc Herbst Workshop
Looking at my praxis/research - the mosaic (a very entangled art form) it is itself is a metaphor for collected and possibly nonrelated fragments, beings, ideas, relics, memories both conceptually and materially. The action of entanglement- the force that draw or throws the us and we together - results in a collection of choruses that is heard as a symphony. Visually, this is the mosaic. When seeing a multitude of views and visions that are thrust and set together they are no longer individuals. A unification and oneness occur by bringing these elements and personalities together. Why is there a need to heal and feel ‘complete”?
Metaphorically- myself as a mosaic- built from memory and trauma and the roles as mother and lover and child and artist and community activist and survivor - I am a structure of entanglements. The process of the “bringing together” is a methodology of storytelling within my physical studio art practice. Entanglements can be accidental, like a collision on a road or a random encounter, just as the setting of tesserae or unrelated fragments within a composition. I will leave this with a quote from painter Bob Ross: ““We don't make mistakes. We just have happy accidents.”
Yet also entanglement can be intimate and violent. The physical connection of bodies and the struggle to coexist in sameness. What happens when we try to unknot, disengage, untangle from another (a history, a person, our identity or community)? Here, “Civil Wars”- uses the connection separation from another or the “other”; what was one splits or perhaps is a merging.
Alone without home or community or collective meaning, pieces become joined to tell a layered story through drawing (design), form (sculpture) and tesserae (broken collected and cut fragments). These fractured elements are broken drawings, writings and impressions are set in ‘permanence’ - mortar to co-exist and reinvent their purpose. As individual damaged shards, their meaning shifts from loss, lost, and brokenness to reinvention, resilience and power in connection.