Artist Statements: Part One

Sarah Nichols
Which comes first in human experience, memory or imagination? And what is their relationship to each other? My work hypothesizes that memory and imagination are inextricable. Imagination is the often unpredictable appropriation of memory that recycles our catalogue of experience into new ideas. Memory is at once both a conscious and subconscious faculty that coerces the waking perspective and biases the senses. It is by calculation, quantization, and categorization that the reasoning mind counters. This internal power struggle accounts for some of the most significant relationships in my work; nature versus technology, the mundane verses the extraordinary, the temporal versus the eternal.

Cat Collier

For the last year my focus has been on creating trees. My techniques have remained the same over the year with the exception of incorporating wood grain contact paper into my collage. I really like the cross section of the wood grain instead of painting or collaging the part of the tree. It is a contrast between real and abstract graffiti inspired line quality. Bright colors versus the brown shades of wood trees simply represents life, a forest of trees growing, rising up as a family of trees, strong and full of hope, my family tree.