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Patricia
Healy McMeans
April 5 - May 3, 2002
"I
know a one-and-a-half-year-old girl who speaks gibberish mostly
and thinks a walrus is a kitty; but has known the word “home”
for some time now. Not just labels it, but truly reveres it. I am
amazed at how she can recognize this. She has breathed on her own
for only 600 days, and yet she knows her front porch from all the
others on approach. What does she see when she looks in the window?
What of the next 600 days will she remember, and for how long?
Our personal and collective memory can often take form in metaphysical
states, from the blueprint of a cedar A-frame to a pot-bellied stove.
These moments in personal history, which C.S. Lewis describes as
"a whisper which Memory will warehouse as a shout." transcend
the rich specificity they possess, and are usually complete and
instant: the olfactory distinctions along the railroad-tie sidewalk
of my girlhood home, long-voweled Minnesotan tones plodding slowly
over the air, or aged down bedcovers that blanket us like resignation.
But it is the alchemy that results from the sweet concoction of
particular architectural spaces, the land in which they're rooted,
and the quality of our personal experience having been there which
culminate to create a sense of Place.
Much of my
work engages an examination of remembered spaces and where they
fall in our quest to 'secure a space..from which to speak and act'*
in this hyper-real and cyber-oriented generation. My investigations
often form specific situations which can be entered, both literally
and figuratively. Their ephemeral, wholly encompassing and time-sensitive
nature echoes the vernacular of memory. Though viewed in an assembled
state, the work's seams remain evident and its planes are propped
against one another, suggesting its own make-up or deconstruction.
The behaviour
of chosen materials -often temporary and semi-translucent like paraffin,
monofilament, glass, and saran -and the ways in which they have
been treated -molded, cast. detailed, faded, stitched -reference
specific characteristics of these types of domestic architectonic
spaces and our memory of them."
-Patricia
Healy McMeans
*Lucy
Lippard, Lure of the Local
The Sculpture
Center is dedicated to enhancing our community's appreciation of
sculpture by fostering the careers of emerging sculptors and promotes
the preservation of outdoor sculpture. It is located in University
Circle at 1834 East 123rd Street.
Gallery
hours: Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m to 4:00 p.m., Saturday
12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (Free Parking is available.)
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