Intimacy, Memory and Imagination

The first show of the 2004-2005 gallery season at the Herndon Gallery, Intimacy, Memory and Imagination, is a celebration of emotive reflections on the trials and joys of life as a woman in American culture. The touch-points of intimacy, memory and imagination function as thematic orientations for each of the three artists’ (Kathleen Thum, Amanda Butler Kolar, and Bridget Milligan) work.

Kathleen Thum’s work expresses an intimacy functioning on a multiplicity of levels; the nostalgia evoked by her images is visceral; it makes you glance down, feeling somehow exposed as you look away, avoiding the plainness, the openness, the raw truth of her imagery. Thum’s works reverberate between intimacy and memory; evoking an awkward play between her expressed intimacies and evoked memories of our own most secret moments.

The tactile physicality of Amanda Butler Kolar’s series, This is Who They Will Be, utilizes the idolatry and metaphor of the wedding dress to evoke concepts such as cleanliness, fortitude and anticipation. Each of the 16 included wedding dresses are amazing in their simplicity and elegance and the way they so clearly show Kolar’s love of craft. A new mother herself, Kolar no longer has the time to complete the complex metal and jewelry pieces (several of these are also on display) she created as a graduate student. The pieces in This is Who They Will Be are especially remarkable in that their finely-wrought constructions utilize common household materials including coffee filters, rice, and soap. Her choice of materials illustrates Kolar’s urgency to create, as well as the undeniable necessity of art in an artists’ life.

Bridget Milligan’s works also embody the necessity of imagination and memory in the life of an artist. Resembling apparitions printed precisely from the cubby-holes of her memory, Milligan’s work laces paint, photographs, and found objects into a stunning visual manifestation of the layering, weaving, and selective attentiveness of memory itself. Like the works by Thum and Kolar, Milligan’s images are distinctly feminine, reflecting on both the blessings and burdens of being female in American culture.

Intimacy, Memory and Imagination was curated by Dr. Colette Palamar, the Gallery’s new Director and Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Antioch College. The exhibition will be on view through November 6, 2004 at the Herndon Gallery, located in South Hall on the Antioch College campus, 795 Livermore Street in Yellow Springs. The Herndon Gallery is open Monday through Friday from noon until 4pm, and from noon until 2pm on Saturdays. Admission is free. The exhibition expresses Antioch College’s commitment to recognizing and understanding diverse forms of cultural expression. Funding for this exhibition has been provided by the Ohio Arts Council and by Antioch College.