Choices Made by Ghosts Reflect My Sensibilities as Well & 3 Tapestries

Show Dates: May 5th - 27th, 2023

Opening Reception: Friday, May 5th, 5-8pm

Choices Made by Ghosts Reflect My Sensibilities as Well | Rachael Zur

Artist Statement:

Traces of us linger in the physical world, even in our absence. There is an evocative nature to domestic objects and spaces—items within homes hold the residual energy of lives lived long after people are gone. My work depicts ordinary objects from living rooms belonging to people I have loved and lost. However it is not grief that I am interested in conveying, but the residue of the affection that is left behind. Texture becomes a way of communicating touch—my own touch held in my work, and what my viewer imagines feeling with their own hand. My touch is held in the work, similar to how a room or object holds the essence of a person when they are no longer present. Contour lines move across the surface of the works like phantoms; other times a contour line defines the edge of a work, (articulating a wing or hand), as a fully present body.

Show Description:

We leave more of ourselves behind in the objects in our homes than we anticipate; and in these dated pieces of furniture is the sublime reality that our lives create an echo that lasts beyond our lifetime. The gentle care that allows a 1970s floral pattern sofa to look almost new in a thrift store makes me believe that its owner was gentle in all of their actions. Perhaps the small indentations in a cushion are where a person frequently sat when they sat to watch a favorite TV show while holding a grandchild. To this ghost whom I do not know: I value the tenderness that remains from your lifetime and I pay homage to these actions through my expanded paintings. Choices Made by Ghosts Reflect My Sensibilities as Well, uses familiar themes of domestic spaces coupled with unexpected painting strategies to explore the delicate nature of what remains when a life is over. Hints of the body hug and haunt the humble furniture and domestic objects depicted in this series of work. The viewer is left with fragments that suggest both presence and absence of an individual; the color palette suggests the warmth felt from the individual who is no longer present.

3 Tapestries | Anna Reynolds Wallis

Show Description:

From afar these tapestries look like paintings, but as the viewer draws near they are presented with the texture, depth, warmth, and the finished but imperfect edges of knitted and crocheted yarn. Viewers are encouraged to stand up close and examine the rows of stitches, how patches are joined together, where it is tidy and where there are flaws.

Created during the pandemic, there is a visual learning curve where you can see a progression in the stitching from the first tapestry to the last. But whether the neater and tidy stitching improves the quality of the work, is up to the viewer to decide.