ADVANCED STUDIO PRACTICE PROPOSAL, BA (Hons) Fine Art
The content of my studio practice has always been personal, political and transcendental. Although the woods have been a recurring subject, my work is not about trees; rather it is about man's place in the universe as part of an ultimate reality which encompasses the material and the immaterial.
Initially my childhood memories were the starting point for my work and they continue to play a role. In October 2004, presidential debate moderator Bob Schieffer asked candidates "will our children and grandchildren ever live in a world as safe and secure as the world in which we grew up?” In a letter published in the International Herald Tribune I wrote:
"Exactly what world did he grow up in? I grew up in the world of the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, mutually assured destruction, the Vietnam War and the Nixon impeachment. I remember elementary-school bomb drills, bomb shelter salesmen and wondering if I could get to my boyfriend’s house before the missiles struck Dallas. I remember the fear of communist infiltrators… I believe that the world in which those of us born after World War II grew up was profoundly insecure and had a lasting impact on how we view the world to this day. It is folly to have a naïve nostalgic idea of 1950’s America."
As a child I saw my world threatened with nuclear annihilation, I saw the evidence of man’s cruelty when I visited the WWII concentration camp at Dachau in 1965. I have always found solace and comfort in the woods. I felt safer climbing into the top of a tree than in my own house.
Since the end of the Cold War, I have watched the world descend into chaos. I see the natural world threatened by man's political, economic and environmental actions.
Can my studio practice effectively address these issues? Can art change the world? As a historian as well as an artist, I have always felt that all art is a primary source reflecting the individual's expression of the world in which they live.
I have always seen trees to be anthropomorphic. I propose to make an installation based on my photographs of trees destroyed by the war in Croatia, a barren landscape which cannot be entered because it is still infested with landmines. It is my intention that the installation will not be specific to the Balkans but will infer more broadly to the various ways our world faces devastation because of man's actions; trees referencing man as well as nature, land mines referencing man's actions, political, economic and environmental.