COOKBOOK SHOW INTENTIONS
KIRBY FREDENDALL
2010
Foremost my work is about the layering of oil paint using the resulting abstract shapes to create an experience that engages the viewer on multiple levels. From a distance the images are abstractions. Flattened panels of color lay over understructures that may or may not reveal their organic curves. Color functions as a vehicle of expression both visually and emotionally. It functions to create space and movement. As the viewer moves closer they are drawn into the image, finding entry through areas of transparency and being denied entry by areas of opacity. Upon closer inspection the viewer begins to see spaces of light and dark that reveal shifting internal structures. Shapes that lie within the layers of paint begin to suggest dfferent things to different viewers. Some of these worlds that I create are easily accessible - some are nearly impossible much like the process of memory.
In the case of this show, I layer the abstract shapes and colors over cookbooks and booklets, ads, and other paper ehemera from the 30’s and 40’s. I have collected cookbooks for many years and have found them to be profoundly engaging sources of information about the women who used them...the roles these women played within their familiies, marriages, and in their larger historical and social surroundings. Having not lived through this era, I , as we all do when revisiting an earlier time, create for myself a version or image of these women’s roles that is formed from sources that are pushed back through time and covered by layers of years, obscured from our current reality.
So as the viewer sees these images from afar, they are abstractions. Shifting layers in various shapes of color and varying transparencies are meant to draw the viewer closer to the image. Closer inspection begins to reveal images, words, colors, and handwriting that speak out from the past through layers of time and memory.
