Eulogy

Loss comes into our lives in different ways. It can come from a diagnosis of a disease and the realization that your life will never be the same. Or maybe you were adopted and experience a lost sense of identity. Or maybe it's the death of a family member or classmate. The loss of life drives this body of work.

During my freshman year of high school, my first classmate died. Over the years nine other classmates have passed away. This was the inspiration for my new works, which have become both memorials and meditations. They are portrait-like pattern paintings made with glitter on board. The classmates project started with the use of lace for the pattern. I want to transport the imagery of this traditional domestic work of women as well as the use of glitter, a very disrespected and crafty medium, into fine art.

Though these paintings are about death, they are very much about life. The glitter adds a dimension of celebratory liveliness. For me the glitter evokes the phrase "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" that is used during a funeral service. It means that we come from dust and we return to dust. In the Bible, from Genesis 3:19, it says "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return".

The colors and patterns were based on each classmate's personality and my memory of him or her. The size of each painting was determined by the intimacy and kind of relationship I had with that person. The wood support, on which the images are laid, plays a strong role in the piece. The exposed wood acts differently in each work, as either positive or negative space. The element of wood keeps reoccurring in my work. There was a life and death of the tree. Using the wood gives it a new life in the same way the glitter paintings keep my classmate's memory alive. For me, wood, patterns and textiles trigger memory and nostalgia.

Embedded within the wood are small graphite drawings copied from the subjects' yearbook photographs, which are reminiscent of obituary photos. Placed behind glass, they seem to be looking out from a different space, still there but just out of reach.

My work has an overall sense of memento mori, a remembrance of our mortality. Eulogy commemorates the lives of my friends and acquaintances who have gone before me. It is a reminder of the connection that we all have through death.

© 2009 kat rohrbacher