My husband, John and I are a strange pair of collectors. Yes, there are the typical feathers, bones and flora we bring home from outdoor walks with our pup, but also the unusual: an abandoned gutter-drain form, the undefinable metal cylinder, the cast-off scrap wood piece. These scavenged bits have followed us from place to place, adorning bookcase shelves and desktops with the same reverence as a crafted souvenir from a long-awaited vacation.
Machined or handmade, some of these forms (even when un-scavenged) take up residence in the back of our minds, later scrawled onto paper. Looking back through old sketchbooks, the idea of our joint show became centered around these “memory-forms.”
Places to Hold an Asterisk
On view at Room 68 until 10/31, work available online here
Certain visuals become totems: an irregular drain pipe, an eroded beach stone, the slope of a hillside—forms that travel with you. The memories of these forms fade as time passes, simplifying and revealing the shape or essence that initially drew you to them. Often, a form resurfaces as a mark in a sketchbook—like a ghost from years before—appearing familiar, yet otherworldly, and often on its own accord.
For Places to Hold an Asterisk, we wanted to explore and elevate some of these “memory-forms” that have haunted our more recent days.
Handrail, A. Grenning, 2020
Brush 3, John Greiner, 2020 (Photo by Brett Wiese Saunders)
Tuner, A. Grenning, 2020
Block-Cu, John Greiner, 2020 (Photo by Brett Wiese Saunders)
To see and purchase work from this show, please visit Room 68