ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is a dialogue between time and material, where history is not a backdrop but a living participant. Like an artist anthropologist, I collect found objects – fragments of the discarded, the forgotten, the once-cherished. I reassemble them into layered mixed media collages and sculptures that function as portals to the past. These portals are not merely visual; they are conceptual thresholds that invite viewers to step into alternate narratives, to reimagine the past through the lens of the present.
Each object carries its own memory, a residue of human touch and context. By juxtaposing these elements, such as metal beside faded photographs, handwritten notes layered over industrial textures, I aim to disrupt linear storytelling and instead evoke a sense of temporal simultaneity. The collage becomes a site of excavation and invention, where personal and collective histories converge.
Through this practice, I explore how memory is constructed, how meaning is layered, and how art can serve as a vessel for time travel. This is not through fantasy, but through the tangible echoes of what once was, and how we are resilient in the process.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
A life-long, mostly self-taught artist, I live near many lakes halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee, in Lindenhurst, Illinois. Growing up in the Midwest, after graduating from The University of Iowa with a Communications major, I moved to Chicago. I began painting and creating collages in the evenings after work one day while sitting on my living room floor after picking up some salvaged wood and magazines on at the thrift store. Selected exhibitions include James May Gallery in Milwaukee, WI; The Robert Wright Gallery of Art at College of Lake County in Grayslake, IL; Blue Moon Gallery in Grayslake, IL: The Saw Room Gallery in Evanston; The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Barnsdall Art Gallery in Los Angeles, and Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. I’ve taken part in many pop-up exhibitions in local businesses and libraries across Chicago and the suburbs. I’m also a member of Evanston Made, the Adler Art Center, Chicago Women’s Art Caucus, Chicago Alliances of Visual Art, Grayslake Arts Alliance and Woman Made Gallery.
© Kristen Neveu