Breathing Under Water. Anne Garvey. 2022
My artwork focuses on anxiety, trauma, and resilience. Tangled elements, such as cords, yarn, and seaweed serve as metaphors for different states of mind, and invite the viewer to contemplate our common struggles. I see the instinctual, human desire to problem-solve as a beautiful thing, regardless of our inability to have all the answers. Recently, these concepts take on new meanings and intensities as we continue to develop ways to cope with uncertainty in both our eternal and internal worlds.
Over the past year I’ve been looking at seaweed washed up on our California beaches and see them as a metaphor for our collective subconscious, of what’s only recently lived right underneath the surface. In the hanging sculptures, I utilized the actual source materials from previous paintings and drawings (yarn, ribbon, and string), creating a sort of psychological kelp forest. Woven within the forms are journal and calendar pages, torn and reassembled into linear but I possible to understand strips. Currently, I am in the process of collecting more personal, hand-written pages from the public to incorporate into the ever-growing installation. Whether drawing, painting, or sculpting, the physical act of creating tangles is cathartic for me; knowing these problems will never be solved, and somehow that makes it easier to let them go.