[110] - Kathleen McHugh - USA

OM.2012.026 - Kathleen McHugh - USA - Box Assemblage
Size: 3.5 x 3.5 x 2. - Media: Watercolor, dyes, acrylic, ink and pastel on Asian papers, and blown egg / with peacock feather.

mchughart.net

Statement:


My introduction to collage and assemblage as a serious art happened in a workshop I took with Betye Saar (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6688207 ) Seeing 'The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,' learning the story behind the inspiration of the work, and how the medium of assemblage itself is the carrier of the message, is a formative influence in how I approach this art form. In addition to sharing her own artistry, Saar was a wealth of knowledge in visual language and techniques. The experience with her ended on the note of "go dumpster diving, rummaging, and while sifting through ephemera find your own aesthetic and voice". In the early 1980's during the time I was in her class, a dominant influence in the arts was minimalism. The drive seemed to be to eliminate anything superfluous. IE., Get rid of the wing of the bird, and keep the curve. It seemed as if anything visceral and tactile was a cheap trick or distraction from "real art". Real music didn't have a melody, real visual art didn't have lush painterly sensuality, and real architecture forgot about its relationship to human scale. Assemblage and collage seemed like air and water to me, necessary for the life and survival of the human element of artmaking within the larger dry desert of intellectual art. This box assemblage is created in memory of the emotion I felt when first seeing assemblage: assemblages and collages as visual melodies and carriers of humanistic expression and communication.