Grace in Dwelling
Grace In Dwelling began as a photographic project, as well as a collected journal of thoughts. As part of Queens Art Intervention 2017, on the afternoon of September 23, the general public was invited to pause and meet me on the sidewalk near Travers Park, Jackson Heights, Queens. Jackson Heights is my home neighborhood. Participants wrote responses to two questions and permitted me to take their photographs to document taking part in this Intervention. The questions: What makes a happy home for you? What is your understanding of this in your community? I am interested in studying how people define home, and, in particular, a happy home and hoped that day to hear back from individuals, couples or entire families to understand a variety of perceptions of grace in dwelling.
The collected text informed the art piece that I made for the Queens Museum group exhibition of the work of the 2017 QAI artists. This exhibition on was on view at the QM, December 11, 2017 through January 19, 2018. Words or phrases from the intervention were selected and lettered by hand on the vellum paper top layer of my piece to make a house of text. The underneath layer of the art piece is painted on traditional watercolor paper. The two layers are sandwiched together forming a scroll with painted imagery visible through the filmy vellum with text.
Imagery reveals my own thinking about grace in dwelling converging with the elsewhere shared by the contributors. What makes a happy home for you? My essential concerns: light, space, time slowed, quiet, beauty, books to read, art, gardens, green in my windows, music, movement, company, conversation, love. The imagery in the watercolor is a metaphor for these fundamentals set beneath a parasol of safekeeping.
Grace In Dwelling, the book, was published on the occasion of the Queens Museum exhibition and includes detailed images of the painting of the same title as well as text and photographs of interviewed participants.
Ragged Sky Press: Grace In Dwelling
Grace in Dwelling 100-page, full-color book, 10″x8″
Purchase $30.00, plus $8.00 shipping and handling
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