ARTIST STATEMENT
I am interested in how we individually respond to time and memory moving through our lives, and how together, humans all share these challenges. This piece is about relationships and how we define ourselves within them over time. What stories do we tell ourselves when dealing with different kinds of loss. Am I still a sister if my sibling dies? How do I grow up without her when her loss fills me forever?
The composition from used up, found objects, breathe new interpretations that cross generational feelings and experiences. I carefully choose materials to represent a feeling of time spent and memories held. The box front holds a small photo peeking out from a keyhole with a small bone that belongs to whom? Opening the box, it reveals stored away emotions. The braille is unseen stories, still felt. An old photo is cut out and placed behind a glass encasement so it can no longer be brought back. The skeletal woman and unheard musical score haunt the imagination of what could have been. The key nestled within the small young beads echo the inability to ever reach a time now gone. As the bigger older beads above balance on top of the level below, the loose beaded ball tries to escape the memory box it inhabits forever.
We revisit our past life experiences and losses through memories. Yet recollections change and fade, they are the myths we tell ourselves to console, to defend, and to ask where do we go from here?
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Beth LeFauve is a designer, painter, sculptor, and installation artist working in her Logan Square studio. Her mixed media story boxes focus on the inner feelings and responses of the personal, yet universal, moments in everyone’s life. Her love of composition, color, material, and allegories, lead her to investigate visual and emotional vibrations that manifest when tossed aside private possessions and worldly junk are connected. They reflect the playful use of thoughtfully placed materials, filled with subconscious interpretations.
Her work has be exhibited in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Stockholm and Athens as well as published in magazines and used for television set design.
© Beth LeFauve