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MAUREEN
KELLEHER: artist's statement
When I was 11 years old I decided I hated art,
that I was not artistic, and that I couldn't do it. I vowed to never
take an art class or have anything to do with art for the rest of
my life. I told myself I was a thinker. I went through school and
college (philosophy and foreign languages) with this firm belief
and actively avoided anything art. After college I focused on helping
the underdog (prisoners and mentally ill).
I made it all the way to 42 years and then
I read a biography of James Baldwin. Something he wrote to his brother,
coupled with a memory of my father's advice to me as a teenager,
set off an idea. That juxtaposition got translated into words, colors
and images on wood. This effort became my piece JAMES and opened
the creativity floodgate. I've been painting, drilling, engraving,
scoring, sanding and lugging stuff around ever since.
I lived in New Orleans for 23 years. I evacuated
on 8/29/05 and ended up in Hoboken NJ.
I found a studio in an old manufacturing building
in Union City, NJ. I started to rebuild my life, my studio, and
my body of work. I had nothing with me from my studio in New Orleans,
so I'd hike up the 14th Street viaduct with a new sander in my backpack,
a few small cans of paint, etc., until I had the basics I needed.
I didn't have any plywood, but the building's dumpsters and freight
bay provided a wonderful new "palette" for my art: freight
pallets. My studio mate graciously hauled pallets into our third
floor studio, to be used as my new canvasses. I started working
on pallets -- something I had only thought of in New Orleans, but
had never gotten around to doing. They opened up a new avenue for
me. I returned to New Orleans in June 2006, got all my stuff, and
closed down my apartment. Gotta roll with reality; thanks, Katrina.
I have had no art training. I've been a quilter since my early 20's
and I've always loved words. In my late 20's I got involved in prisoner
issues and then started working in the legal field and came into
contact with men on death row. I'm very much drawn to the heavier
topics of life, and my spirit veers toward the underdog. The topics
of death, rape, the death penalty, slavery, racism, incest, mental
illness, what does it mean to be alive? to die? etcetera, are evident
in my work. And then there are the things in my life that I've never
forgotten -- events, a phrase or two, or a photo I've seen and could
not get out of my mind. I've drawn from my life and memories to
cover the plywood and pallet. Tender strength all around me -- the
absurd, the goofy, the sad, the really sad, the interesting, the
wonderful, the stuff that makes me feel like shit, the stuff that
brings tears to my eyes, the stuff that scares me, the stuff that
makes me feel good, the stuff that just is -- to be brought up and
out. |
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