Sunday, June 26, 2011

Sunday Landscape

This is the awesome art of my friend Marianne McGrath. She's an art Professor at Temple College in Temple, TX. She mentors young artists. She has this amazing ability to transform textiles into stunning landscape. Maybe that's why her art speaks to me- I have a soulful affair with landscape and plants. Most importantly, to me anyway, is that she is a true friend. To the core. I adore and love this lady. She came with The Man package- and I have told him that should he ever leave me- I get custody of Marianne and because of that- he'll never go since no one wants to lose The Marianne. Sometimes I get to see her creations in progress in the studio behind her home and I am always stunned, always amazed and always secretly jealous that I could never make sculpture spring to life like she can.

Website: http://mariannemcgrath.com/

Website: http://mariannemcgrath.com/


An excerpt I found from Marianne:
Human migration from city to suburb continues to change the American landscape. In my longing for the landscape I knew as a child, and witnessing what lies there today, I created this work merging three experiences-one witnessed, one remembered, one imagined-into a singular landscape. A field of roses, recalling both the name and processes of the land, rise on rods out of plywood roofs, reflecting the landscape as it is today. The roses, made of unfired clay and preserved in wax, are incredibly fragile and speak of the fleeting nature of memories and lost landscapes where these memories were formed. My ancestors came from Ireland in the 1860’s and settled on the then new plains of the American West. They carved up and divided lands, planting crops to aid the human growth that was occurring all around them. I grew up in those fields where my family made their livelihood for generations, but today where there were once rows of crops, there are suburban streets leading to tract housing, shopping malls, and freeway over passes. The idea of landscapes lost consumes my current work, and the processes, materials and forms from that landscape are reminiscent in this work. “What I See, What I Saw” is based on a ranch where I grew up and tells the story of my earliest memories of this landscape as a field of grain as far as the eye could see. When asked, my father explained it was called the Rose Ranch after the scores of rose plants my great grandmother once tended to at the spot, and in that instant I saw that sea of grain as a sea of roses. That sea of roses is now a sea of rooftops. A field of hand-formed earthenware roses rise on rods out of roofs of plywood homes. The roses, made of unfired clay and preserved in wax, are incredibly fragile and speak of the fleeting nature of memories and the lost landscape were this memory in particular was formed. The rods and plywood houses are made of industrial materials that now fill the landscape. This work speaks of the human idea and need for home, the physical migration that pushes this need, and the price the landscape pays for this migration



Marianne installing her amazing pieces.


1 comment:

  1. Beautiful work. What a talent your friend has! Thank you for sharing her work with us.

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