ARTIST STATEMENT
JANET ORSELLI AT OK HARRIS WORKS OF ART
2010
My raw materials are leftovers from the past, or what some might call “worn out stuff”. The objects I chose are survivors -- yet seem to have lost their usefulness and reason for being. They live in dark spider webby attic corners, inside boxes hidden in the basement, or in the junk pile down the street. These objects have a story to tell -- if we listen. Rusty and often stuck - this body of work still moves (some). All of them want to move more. Each struggles to get ahead - some drag a weight behind them, others have a shell to break through, and still others - await takeoff. They are all trying awful hard. Ultimately they attain arthood by releasing their object identity and joining others in a new (lively) purpose.
ARTIST STATEMENT
JANET ORSELLI @ if ART Gallery, 2011
Early on with my art, and in my life as well, I discovered that exactly what I thought I wanted did not appear nor was easily “found”. So I began instead to pay attention to what I did “find” and what seemed to call out to me. Certain objects pulled me to them and I didn’t know why. I could feel some connection; a value beyond what I could see. So I carried them home to my studio and asked them questions like, “what do you want to be? Where do you want to be? What can you bring to the world in your strongest, most powerful way?” Usually the answers to the questions had nothing to do with what the object had been originally.
Once I feel their meaning individually I can get a sense of how they can be joined with others. Through trial and error I experience how they become stronger but only if joined in a particular way and with the right “others”. This is a time consuming process - often what seems intellectually like it “should” work is a dismal failure and vice versa. For the work to really come “alive” each object has to be fully what it is yet also be a contributing member of the whole. The entire work must pull its weight and speak its truth clearly.
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