implicit art

I really am a text geek. I mean, I know I’m supposed to be a visual artist and all, but it makes such a huge difference to talk about art; to hear others talk about what it does for them; to hear artists say what they were trying to evoke or explore; hell, most of the time, I don’t even know what I am doing as an artist until I’m forced to say it out loud, or write it down.

So, I’m at this show, chatting to Clive and some lady that curated it, and I say, without thinking, “this work looks really sad and, I think, nostalgic, on some level.” It was just a gut reaction – and not one that you’d necessarily expect to hear about a bunch of photos attached to clothing patterns. But that’s how I felt, and I just blabbed (gotten me into trouble more than once, I tell you).

As it turns out, Ms Grant had a huge battle with cancer. The photographs she had taken were of her close family and friends, and she made the prints look old – treating them, always already, as fleeting (lost?) memories.

I know on one level it sounds sad, and on another too personal for many contemporary trends of the day. I, on another level, like to think of it as a kind of sentimental deconstruction, myself. Her current life is sacred, treasured; more importantly, the work also changes how we think of memory, construction of memory, stories.

I mean, I’m sure she knew what she was doing when she placed these images on clothing patterns, possibly re-membering something she did when younger, possibly referencing that the pieces fit together differently, depending on how we see them, how we construct them ourselves. (you always manage to be PoMo without saying it, don’t you nathaniel?)

I’d like to see where Sue Pam Grant goes next. I think this stuff is already working conceptually and aesthetically, but would be much more effective if she played with things like scale and texture even more. Really large, like how things around me felt when I was a child. Really small, b/c we often feel smaller ourselves in the scheme of things, as we learn more. And maybe art that pokes, memories that weep, patterns that stick out in all the wrong ways….