Memory and Metaphor

Lab 2.0  December 16, 2014   by Susan Weinberg

Today was our first artist led lab and I had the pleasure of co-leading it with my fellow lab member Susan Armington. It proved to be a good partnership as both of our bodies of work deal with memory and we are located in the same studio building.   You've heard of progressive dinners, well this was a progressive lab as we began our session in my studio and halfway through went up a floor to Susan's.  That afforded us each an opportunity to share our work as part of our working session.

Our session began with a review of twelve quotes from the Bible which look at water as metaphor.  Each person selected three that spoke most to them and the following two passages were clearly favored for further discussion by many in our group. 

Proverbs ch 20:5  Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.   

Jeremiah 2:13

For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. 

We then discussed the metaphor within each of these and found multiple interpretations.  For example the Jeremiah passage was seen as focusing on such varied topics as our destruction of the environment, spiritual being and the politics of Israel.  Metaphor is a topic that lends itself to artistic interpretation and our brief foray found the Bible to be rich in metaphoric content.

We then looked at the way we use water metaphorically in our language.  Our use of language was what first drew me into the idea of memory and water.  We talk of things bubbling up and streams of consciousness.  We widened our view beyond memory and were a bit dismayed to realize that water is often used to represent a challenge.  For example:


Drowning in work
Going upstream
Treading water
A fish out of water
Coming up for air
Swamped

Conversely we use it in a more positive sense when we speak of floating, particularly "going with the flow".  Water is buoyant and sustaining and allows us to combine our strength with the force of the currents.

We then took a look at a powerful quote from Toni Morrison, "All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was".  We discussed our understanding of that quote and then turned to Morrison's interpretation.

"Because, no matter how "fictional" the account of these writers, or how much it was a product of invention, the act of imagination is bound up with memory.  You know they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage.  Occasionally the river floods these places.  "Floods" is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering.  Remembering where it used to be.  All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place.  It is emotional memory - what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared.  And a rush of imagination is our "flooding".

At this juncture I shared some of my work on memory, specifically the series from the Jewish Identity and Legacy Project, a series of paintings based on memories shared in interviews by Jewish elders.  I also spoke of my new focus on loss of memory as I examine the question of what happens to our identity as we lose memory  I harkened back to the Morrison quote as I thought about how my mother who is losing memory clings to aspects of her identity as a teacher, remembering her past identity even as the Mississippi remembers as it floods its banks.

The second half of our session took place in Susan Armington's studio where we viewed her work which is very much based on water, geography and culture.  She asked what we saw in her paintings metaphorically and different imagery was noted, forms echoed by rivers snaking gracefully across her work.  We then recalled experiences we had where water figured prominently.  Our memories were ultimately captured on a clothesline of decorative papers where we noted the body of water and the metaphor it was associated with through our story.

Our exploration discovered that metaphor is a way to distill and explore meaning, to take a concept and broaden and enrich its usage through associations.

An Exploration of Memory

This week's Artist's Lab began with an introduction to Keren Kroul whose colorful watercolors hang on the walls of the Tychman Shapiro gallery. Her brightly colored geometric segments repeat and twist, moving forward and away. White space is carved out, drawing one's eye to the negative space that defines the larger image. Complementing her work are large sculptural forms by Jeffrey Haddorf, assembled from ceramic and metal. Through the open space within his sculptures you glimpse Keren's colorful imagery and realize that each echoes aspects of the other.

Keren began by orienting us to the concerns that inform her work. With one parent from Argentina and one from Israel, Keren spoke Hebrew at home and Spanish in her daily life in Mexico and Costa Rica. As the only Jewish child in her Spanish speaking school, identity became a central focus of her artistic exploration. Keren explores identity through the lens of memory, reconstructing it through fragments that repeat, creating emphasis.

Along one long wall hung watercolors that captured forms that tied to memory, the reflection of Israeli blinds on the floor, a braid from her grandmother's twin who died in the Holocaust, figures curled in the ground. It is a storyboard of sorts, replete with iconic imagery. The colors change, becoming brighter, more optimistic as figures begin to connect to the landscape. In the last panel are geometric forms which Keren carried over to her next body of work, expanding on the forms as if a meditation, a repetition, but with variations of form and color.

Keren began as a painter, but when she was pregnant twelve years ago she sought a non-toxic medium and shifted to watercolor on paper. That practical decision opened up a dialogue with drawing and paper and became an ongoing exploration. She abandoned the physicality of the large stroke of painting for very focused work with small brushes applied as she stands. Always open to happy accidents, Keren creates forms that conjure neurons or perhaps a coral reef.

What is the relationship between memory, art and history? How would we draw it? These were the questions that were posed to us as we broke into groups following Keren's discussion; familiar turf for me as my work focuses on memory and I have often contemplated the linkage to art. Several of our groups drew double helixes while a third created sculptural forms to express the interrelationships between memory, art and history.

Memory seems more immediate than history, there is someone who remembers an event that presumably occurred in their experience. Both memory and history are created through the lens of the viewer and thus can differ among those recording it. Each is also subject to distortion. History represents more of a collective view, not necessarily universal, but codified and reinforced within a group. It in turn begins to create a collective memory, less immediate and more subject to being shaped by art or history.

We continued our exploration of these themes with a video which explored how art shapes memories of history and creates acts of remembrance. The work of Shimon Attie was presented as an illustration of the layering of time and memory. Attie projected images of the former Jewish community of Berlin on buildings, matching photos to the original location, juxtaposing time and place to create remembrance.

Equally powerful is his project Portraits of Exile which uses light boxes submerged in water to juxtapose the 1943 rescue of Denmark's Jewish community with present day refugees.

Memory is fostered through imagery and story creating a fundamental linkage to artwork. While artwork may represent and shape history, whose history it represents and with what level of veracity can be an open question.

Author note: Art and memory is my personal artistic focus. I have addressed many of these issues in my personal blog and am providing some of the links below for your reference.

Art and Memory

In 2013 I attended a workshop at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies on the topic of Holocaust memory and its expression through art and literature. The following entries were based on that workshop.

Creating Collective Memory
Juxtaposing Time and Place

To view information on lab artists and lab discussion links and handouts, please go to theJewish Artists' Laboratory website.

*The Jewish Artists’ Laboratory is an arts initiative through the Sabes Jewish Community Center featuring 25 artists exploring the theme of Light through study and art making. The project is funded through The Covenant Foundation and similar projects are being done in both Milwaukee and Madison. Artists explore how the theme of Light is relevant to Jews and non-Jews, to religious and non-religious, to the community and to the individual, to the artist and the non-artist.

 

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