getting the show ready for viewing
I spent the afternoon today hanging art at Chakra Khan—my art this time!
I’m excited to share this work with you. It has two parts. One is a series of colorful acrylic gouache and oil pastel drawings. The other is a series of drawings I made from my nephew Matthew’s drawings and writing. I am really curious how they will read to other people, as they are so close and personal to me. Read the statement for the pieces below, and then come in and see the work. We’ll have a reception as part of the Ivy Arts Fest on 10/14 from 7-9pm, but I plan to have another event or two while the work is up as well.
love,
julie
THE MATTHEW PIECES
Matthew K Touching a Maple Tree
The bulk of this show is a series of drawings co-created with my nephew Matthew. Matthew died in December of 2008, just a few days before my birthday. He hadn’t been seriously ill and his death was completely unexpected.
Matthew filled notebook after notebook with drawings, lists and stories in his 9 years here. I took a selection of these pages, reproduced them, and used them to start a series of new drawings.
I have worked on these drawings for three years. After making the reproductions, it took awhile to begin. Once I did, there were lots of breaks. The work was joyful at times, but of course also difficult. It is nice to be “with” Matthew in this way. But it is so hard not to be “with” him in the usual way.
These drawings are guesses–what might Matthew have been doing with this image? What do these lines mean? What compelled him to list out every title of the Box Car Children? I follow his lines and fill in his spaces, making my own marks and in the meantime hopefully conveying some of his brightness, his cleverness, his strange and beautiful heart that is still connected to mine. It is not a replica of what he would have made. It is something I am making, me in this time-space where he no longer is, me as part of the many who have been left behind without him, trying to manage as the years move forward.
These are an attempt to stay with him. To go back with him and embrace who he is and to learn what he is like and to hold him near.