NESTS
Spring Mentorship with Leslie Fandrich.
Here is a link to a video of the work I’d like to discuss during this preview:
Video of Nest Making
Materials: Photos printed on paper, natural dyed wool and yarn, grass and other organic materials. Photos consist of selfies from a trip with my partner after almost 8 months apart.
My long distance relationship has seen its way through quite a few obstacles: 2000 miles of country, a 18 years difference in life stages and relying on digital connection for 8 months because of the state of the pandemic. Our relationship remains unconventional.
Weaving these nests from pictures of our last reunion was a cathartic and introspective exercise. Was I putting us back together? Was I building a nest for my partner? Without glue or any fixative, I twisted together these scraps, hoping that they would not simply fall apart. Finding the gaps to weave in these materials, building them up slowly, until I could press my hands to the walls without them shifting apart. This exercise; the frustrations and tiny success becomes analogous with life and my simple desire to find stability and love.
I first started noticing old nests this spring while my exploring an abandoned house near my childhood home in Littleton, Ma. The house became the subject of a Photo Book and VideoProject. These old nests, balanced up under the eave of a doorway or between a light fixture and the wall, were echo to the house’s structure; once useful, once home—but now empty and in decay.
Among other projects this spring, I constructed a paper collage. Sewn together printed photos into a sort of quilt. More info about this collage is here. Together with the nests, I photographed these art objects outdoors and indoors. I am trying to discover the relational ideas I can evoke in staging these photographs. I am in the middle of this study.
I’ve thought that I might be interested in displaying these works together; video, photos, and art objects. Additionally, maybe visitors could construct their own nests using printed photos, paper, found materials set out for them.
Reading that inspired and enlightened me:
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard (1958)
The Unmaking of Home in Contemporary Art by Claudette Lauzon (2017)
Precarious Ecologies of Cosmopolitanism by Marsha Meskimmon (2013)