Lifting the lid off of unconscious images and bringing them into physical form fuels my art making practice. Using various media; cast metal, found objects, wood, and paint, I look for the relationships that personal, abstract images have with the physical world, and whether or not they can communicate something that is not easily expressed in words, but rather is communicated through it’s physicality. Other video and sound works use words to explore the internal dialogue of the mind and ask, does the visual language of the subconscious speak to a larger audience than just the dreamer?
My work is greatly influenced from my training in modern dance, and references to the body and movement are often evident. The wall painting "Pink Dot" is a good example, where the drips and marks on the wall reveal the process of movement in making, while the scale reveals physical sphere of influence within arms reach. Choreography and performance of dance requires a full attention to detail, space and awareness of the body as a vehicle. An incredible dance performance appears to be effortless, much like powerful sculpture. In metal casting, I have found a medium which employs the training required of dance: discipline, physical strength, and presence of mind. Casting the iron thin, and incorporating voids into the castings directly references the body: permeable and fragile. Melting metal with the elements of air, and fire refers to the physical body in motion: drawing on internal energy, breath, and precise placement of the body in space. My metal castings combine textures of natural materials with architectural and industrial qualities. I find metal casting to be a place where these worlds intersect and create a tension where the physicality required provides the opposite tension on the musical strings allowing the harmony needed to thrive in our digital, virtual world.
Neitzche wrote in Thus Spake Zarathustra “ The world is deep. Deeper than the day can read.” Recent work includes narrative metaphors for this hidden world. For example, the sound piece Last night grandma helped me make my bed is a multi-layered sound track where I read the first line of every dream as written in journals over a 20 year time period. The 20 minutes track weaves the mundane with the mysterious, while providing an intimate view of my life as revealed in the action as told in the text. The title line, where the domestic act of making a bed becomes metaphor for that which is learned from the ancestors further references the choices one makes to create a life: ”You’ve made your bed now lie in it.”
Another layered digital piece is the video "The sides of my head", 2009, where the sound of me reading a rather violent dream of self mutilation is in contrast to a slow moving camera which follows the track of an earth moving machine. The juxtaposition created invites the viewer to reflect on how our dream images of violence and harm occur in a peaceful state of sleep: A non-physical state which could still enter our psyche due to the disturbing visual we create in our minds eye. I am fascinated with this contrast of the internal and external world.
Sides of my head from Felicia Glidden on Vimeo.
cast iron & slate
2007
salem art works, salem ny