catherine hammond

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Artist Statement

Walk into A Clearing at the Center as if entering a mandala or a medieval labyrinth. Notice that Fictions, the paintings on the outside walls depend on a sense of narrative as they take their titles from the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine.  The series Diccionario includes pages from a Spanish Dictionary from 1945 that belonged to my grandfather.

 

The Girls live at the center.  I paint my own body to imprint image on silk.  Those that hang call up Fog, Mist, Twilight, and Whirlwind.  They converse with Chinese landscape painting or stone-age fertility figures. Some mention ceremonial or funerary robes. The tattered filaments resurrect quipu, knotted strings used by the Inca for memory.

 

Those with iron bases portray transformation.  Each names a woman or nymph who, according to mythology, goes through a metamorphosis to become something else—a tree, that pool of water, a spider.  With antique wire cage hoop skirts as armature these Girls explore limitation and boundary. The concept of cage becomes fundamental, whether it be physical or emotional.  Ultimately, we return to the word ribcage and to the sense of body at the core of these sculptures.  Yet, realize that transformation also offers release and the possibility of change.