2012 | VICKI LYNN WILSON

CUMULUS

Balance – 2012. Concept Sketch, Charcoal on Paper, 30”h x 12”w

Press release:

Vicki Lynn Wilson has been given the 1900 square foot Northview Gallery for three months this summer, to use as a studio space and to build an installation on site. “Cumulus” is the result of a daily practice which has allowed visitors to tour the space, ask questions and occasionally, help with the creation of an aspect of the work. The space will remain an open studio environment until the show is about to open. Wilson says of the experience, “It’s rare to have such a long engagement with an installation space. To be able to figure out the logistics over time instead of on the fly just before the show opens has really opened up my process. The best part of working in public has been the encouragement, mostly from people I’ve just met. There are people who have seen this work every day and now feel vested in its completion”.

Cumulus is a sculptural installation comprised of Paper Mache, pattern drafted cardboard, sewn and cut paper, carved Styrofoam and other mixed media forms and structures. Several human forms traverse the monochromatic brown space of an implied flooded plane. Their postures are bent to the domestic objects which rise from their arms and backs. “I began with an idea of wanting to transform the space. I decided to use cardboard and paper as a practical matter. The gallery is large so I needed inexpensive and plentiful material. It was the disposability and transience of the material that led me to the subject of the installation.” Taking a “waste not” approach, the majority of the materials were collected from the recycling of Widmer Brewing Company, Rose City Upholstery and the PCC Bookstore. Even the coffee cups and trash of the artist and visitors to the space are being incorporated.

The work is inspired by the artist’s lifelong dreams of home interiors and family, and based on the theory that the state of a home in a dream reveals the psychological state of the dreamer. The work is also inspired by the powerful images of natural disasters around the world which have left survivors sifting through wreckage to recover their lost objects. “My dreams are often about loss and disaster, though I don’t always read them as bad dreams. I think they are a subconscious expression of compassion for those who are suffering. This installation is a conscious expression of the same. Objects become so significant to us when they take on symbolic qualities. When the memory of something lost becomes associated with an object, the significance can be so heavy”