Place

by Shelby Sand

72"W X 34" H • Lithograph, chine cole, machine sewn $$900

I’m interested in the pattern of creativity and conformity in my life and strive to understand it through investigation of the past. My family experienced an devastating flood and lost many personal belongings, especially photographs, I am absorbed with the ones that are left. When I look at photographs I can still smell the flood; it's indescribable but it's something like a mixture of moldy soil and toxic chemicals. It's the smell of everything from everyone’s lives stewing together and rotting, in the same waters. The photographs are very important to the prints I make. Whenever I pick up an old photograph, from my own family or otherwise, i treasure it. It’s almost like i feel a need to save that moment or it could be lost forever. I’m drawn to the symbols i associate with womanhood in relation to the past, present, and future. I draw from my childhood, my mothers and my grandmothers to discover what it is we as women share and why we are who we are. I am most interested in past decades because of its apparent sweetness, the femininity. I want to contribute to the recognition of the crafts we as women learn. I’m curious about out choices we as children make to engage in certain activities, to play with specific toys. Are those choices natural or nurtured? I incorporate photographs and non-traditional materials such as sewing patterns and paper dolls as well as female symbols in my prints. The idea of the body or the life blood and the grid are depicted as a connection as well as a division of themes. I specifically emphasizes historic female crafts such as sewing, quilting, and knitting with an underlying theme drawing attention to conformity in relationship to gender roles.