Forms of Shelter - Ann Marie Kennedy
Artspace, Inc.
201 E Davie St
Ann Marie Kennedy’s Artspace residency began with the July 6 First Friday Gallery Walk during which she invited the Artspace community to visit her new studio (Artspace’s Gallery One) to learn about her residency plans. During the month of July, visitors were welcomed to the gallery space to see an installation taking shape. The residency culminates in an exhibition of work which will open in conjunction with the First Friday Gallery Walk on August 3 from 6-10pm.
Prior to her residency, Kennedy moved into a new living space. Therefore, her Artspace residency and exhibition became partially about processing the experience - sorting through personal belongings, packing, moving, unpacking - and generally absorbing a new space and a new neighborhood. In addition, the experience of visiting a lot of different living spaces led to a focus on architecture, and more specifically, vernacular architecture, a longtime interest for Kennedy. She notes that she has been inspired to document the passing of these structures as they are so often falling into disrepair, and in most cases will disappear from the landscape in a matter of years. In addition, Kennedy is interested in the way these structures tend to evolve organically. In many ways, this evolution is quite similar to the way Kennedy’s exhibition has developed – responding to and absorbing things from the place or landscape.
Kennedy began her Artspace residency with the creation of a large-scale drawing. She views drawing as a way to explore ideas for her installations, as well as a direct form of image making and expression. The large-scale drawing executed in chalk on tar paper occupies nearly fifty feet, wrapping two walls of the gallery. In the past Kennedy has used an iconic house structure (basic gable front house) in her work. Using native and early American buildings as a point of departure, Kennedy explores the origins of that simple house structure, as well as investigates variations in forms of house styles. The end result is an inventory referencing various forms of shelters – and a glimpse into how different structures influenced others and evolved over time.
In addition to drawings on tar paper, Kennedy also created a house structure within the exhibition space. For Kennedy, temporal installations are the ideal format to explore ideas about memory, transience, and loss. The use of the house structure in Kennedy’s work may represent shelter and safety, but more importantly the structures often point to the memories held within the walls. The spaces themselves reveal a narrative of their own, from the history of buildings to more personal narratives created by the inhabitants. In this way, the structures become more like “homes.”
The structure Kennedy has created within the Artspace gallery is based on a dogtrot or double house, which is characterized by having two rooms linked by a central open breezeway or hallway. One room is closed, yet visitors can see the contents of the room via the shadows cast on the transparent material. The second room is enclosed on 3 sides, but visitors can enter the space through a narrow door on the far side (opposite the central hallway).
As in the case of many of her recent installations, Kennedy utilizes plant material in both rooms of the structure. Using local plants along with local architecture connects the interior to the exterior. Visitors are asked to contemplate the relationship of the house structure to the landscape, and the impression of the landscape upon the house. Kennedy further pushes this concept by incorporating an audio component of local nature sounds. The structure serves as a container, housing a collection from the natural world. But more so, the structure itself, filled with plants and the sounds of nature, serves as a metaphor for memory. In this way, the structure becomes a place for visitors to create their own narrative, as they reflect on their own memories of shelter, home, and place.
