Steampunk Breathe Pendulum Clock- Erin Keck
My solo show this year at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, for which I am in the midst of preparations, is scheduled for Friday, June 6th. This show, which I am calling Traveller, will be my fifteenth solo show at the Principle, something which sets my mind reeling with all sorts of thoughts. I had no idea when that first show, Redtree, took place back in 2000 that it would continue for so many years. To be truthful, I had no expectations of any sort.
I just didn’t know then. Just as I don’t know now.
Thinking of this show makes me wonder at the fact that I am now in my twentieth year as a professional artist. While I had no real endpoint to which I was aspiring in the beginning, I was nonetheless impatient to get there. The intervening years have taught me a bit about respecting time and patience, about plodding ahead incrementally and setting aside certain anxieties. Or at least, coming to terms with them so that they don’t paralyze me.
Time is also a great revelator of who one really is. You can’t fake who you are through twenty years. No, you can’t endure twenty years of creating without revealing your own personal truths.
I think my body work over this time is ample display of that. It is flawed and imperfect. It is rough around the edges at times yet delicate, almost fragile, at other times. It is sometimes loud when it should be quiet and quiet when it should be loud. It is confident and bold yet filled with uncertainties and apprehensions. It tries to be plain-spoken and easily accessible yet not simple or frivolous.
Unapologetically, it is what it is.
I could easily describe myself with all of these. I am my work and my work is me and together we travel in time.
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The cool timepiece at the top right is from artist Erin Keck of Mechanicsburg, PA. She does some creative and wonderful steampunk pieces. Check out her online store by clicking here.
Redtree Times 