Woven Women, 2014

Woven Women

I majored in Art History in college and have been enamored of old paintings, prints and drawings from those studies ever since. Many of the classic paintings have become part of my visual vocabulary.
In 2014 I had the opportunity to be an Artist-In-Residence at the Leonard Covello Center for the Aging, located in East Harlem. I made photographs on the streets and of the people whom I met at the Center, on the way to my studio each day. The studio was a large empty bright space and I decided to work on a collage project using reproductions from art history, “Woven Women”. The second year I expanded this to include portraits and self-portraits of both sexes, “Woven Women & Striped Men”.
A portrait is a likeness captured at a certain time reflecting the period in which it was made. I love that these paintings are so recognizable - part of a visual vocabulary for anyone who has studied Art History. They are iconic for a reason. In the pairings, I was interested in the backward and forward of them, which might refer to the idea of the painting as mirror, as a reflection of the past.