As a young woman growing up in Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA), I was consistently being kicked out of the house and forced to find refuge at friends␣, boyfriends␣, and even my teachers␣ homes. It was during this time that I realized the importance of having a sanctuary where I was safe and able to dream. I would often escape to mountain tops where I was able to tap into my inner self and find peace. It is this place, places like this, or visualized places that still act as my conduit for inner peace.
Out of curiosity of others␣ sanctuaries, I asked five of my closest friends what brought them peace and if they too had a ␣special place␣. As a result of my query, each friend provided me with an image of a landscape that brought peace to him or her. From these images I developed the concept and created Sanctuary, an installation comprised of five vertical structures, dedicated to and named after, each friend, Dawn, Steve, Iris, Big Ben, and Ben.
Each work differs in height and is housed in a three dimensional wooden coffin like structure with perspex viewing windows on both the front and back. The layered imagery within the structure was created by employing a mixture of materials like, paper, board, watercolour, coloured pencil, and glue. The wooden and perspex structures are more than display cases, they represent each person␣s skin and act as a barrier that encapsulates the person and protects him or her in his or her precious, sacred, and internal time and process. A time and process, which is delicate and fragile, like the paper used.
The concept of Sanctuary is articulated in three primary ways. First, the viewers of these works are intended to feel that the installation, with its pillared artworks, is a sanctuary in itself. Secondly and thirdly, the subject matter of the individual structures are both a sanctuary as well as an illumination of the symbolic process one goes through to find sanctuary and inner peace.
The style of the work is my own style of ␣Mysticalrealism␣, a style that embraces elements from both the mystical and the realistic. The colors chosen for the works are primarily bold and striking, with an array of flesh tones and golden highlights that contrast with the black of the background and the white of the birds.
Each work, although possessing a similar style, color and theme, has varying differences from the type of birds, height, distortions, and dynamic between the various objects within the viewing windows. Each bird or different shaped winged creatures symbolizes the animal that I associate with each of my friends. The height of the work is an exaggeration of each person␣s actual height, while maintaining the correct proportional differences between them all.
There are obvious distortions that I have done when rendering their feet and more subtle ones that I have done to their faces. The faces are done to accentuate or detract from different aspects of the person while maintaining the overall visual integrity of his or her individuality. This articulates that what might be viewed, as a defect to others, conversely is perfect to a friend. The feet have been exaggerated, warped, melded and distorted to highlight the balancing act of life and the importance of maintaining balance in life.
The front side of the structures has a myriad of things going on, especially with the birds that represent the different aspects of the self, trying to get to the landscape to find internal peace through the heart. When the bird is killed by the black colored birds or hair this means that an aspects of the person has died because it is no longer providing a valuable function in his or her life. In addition, there is the necklace around each of their necks with a golden pendant, which represents the heart and is the final place the white birds must go through, after the landscape, before reaching the other side or the inner self.
At the back of the structure, seen through a round hole, is each friend in a state of peace, which is connected to the landscape on the front, accessed through the pendant by the protruded birds. This is the ␣symbolic process␣ I mentioned earlier, a process that has three steps, 1: visiting one␣s landscape either physically or mentally, 2: Going through one␣s heart, 3: Arriving at a place of peace.
Sanctuary can be interpreted in various ways, but the most important message of the work is the importance of cherishing internal peace and the places we go to get there. Regardless of the means of access, the important thing is access, so connection can be made with our true nature, removed from the distractions and obligations of life.
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