whitespec | past
Dark of the Moon image by Zipporah Thompson

 

January 8 – February 13, 2016
Dark of the Moon | Zipporah Thompson
Opening Reception:
Friday, January 8 | 7:00 pm

Dark of the Moon

Through amorphous forms, the hidden mysteries of dream worlds, the unknown, the unconscious, and the human psyche are examined.  Materials with heightened tactility are mixed together to create cosmic, psychic, supernatural, and metaphysical landscapes. Through the navigation of uncharted, mystical territories and the sublime terrains of both dissipating and catastrophic forces, identity, self, and otherness are explored.  Foraging for materials around me, I am drawn to collecting and classifying fragments and objects, and assembling them to recreate the synergistic whole. Artifacts of the arcane fuse together past, present, and future.  The collagist, patchwork nature of my practice is an effort to reconstruct narrative, to recollect wilderness, to reconnect with the land, and to rekindle ties to the ancestors.

Ritual and alchemy become key to understanding both the objects themselves, and also in the particular processes used to create these objects. Wild wovens reflect the repetition of beating the fibers together to create cloth on the loom, and are joined with the use of dye and water to create enigmatic hues of color, mending through stitching and sewing, sculpting with bizarre, surreal textures created from abject materials, and last but not least the intimate and direct process of working with clay. The work activates the imagination of the viewer/audience in the participatory search for meaning and purpose in my work.