Holly Suzanne and the Layering of Experience

On October 25, 2012October 25, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Art, Writing

It is my great pleasure to be composing something for myself regarding my wife’s art in regards to an upcoming showing of hers in Wichita KS (see below for details). I am accustomed to engaging her work with an ekphrastic/participatory sensibility and interaction rather than an observer’s point of view. The pieces below are mixed media encaustic works by Holly Suzanne on 6×6 or 8×8 wood boards.

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“First my…forever my…grown in a…garden” of hands, words, expressions, visages and image.

The mind in bloom, the mouth as fruit, our world in our hands, are nothing new.

Underlying love vaguely aware of an end from the stars of night to ground of flesh,

in layers.

I was thinking of text-emotion-change-emotion-text-emotion-change. Of over and again. Begin.

With rarely the perspective to see in, or through, as we are forming and tattering layers simultaneously. Always.

There is something viscous about us, like warm wax.

“Turning away…she saw herself…” But not really. Recollection rearranges, perception also blinds. Assemblers and dissemblers we. Our stories. Growing them even as we prune. Story over story, backwards, forwards, like the strokes of a brush, the trembling of hands, motions of a body at rest. What comes out, in, or through depends on the moment. Each story a backstory with a curious future.

“First my…forever my…” ever-altering “garden,” the world in my hands behind my face. I tinker and trouble, collage and create, rationally embodied in emotion. What shields and separates reveals and connects: our skin, our language(s), our sighs.

Even our names are malleable, oily pools.

Look at, look in, look through. And over again.

Begin.