Annie Waldrop, detail, Exrays, 96" x 40" photograms

Annie Waldrop-Artist Statement

Women’s issues are very important to me.  Themes of abandonment, domesticity, fertility, women’s labor and the discarded are repeated in a sort of surrealist family album or 3 D diary that seems at once autobiographical and universal.  One way of looking at this body of work is to see each piece as a memory in a surrealist dream.  Memories, like fragments or mosaics at an archeological site, connect and are interwoven, resulting in a dialogue among pieces.  For me photographs are key elements, as they eternalize moments in an individual’s life history.  A cabinet card of an anonymous woman could easily be my grandmother or yours, serving as part of a collective narrative of the history of the feminine.  Although the images have been built and assembled, not painted, I feel a strong connection to the work of Frida Khalo, who through her highly personal works, still maintained a connection to the collective.

Domesticity as a central theme, takes the form of irons, clotheslines, a grocery bag, giant needles and small dresses.  I have felt conflicted about women’s roles through time in these works I explore both the positive and negative aspects of domesticity.  For instance, the giant needle and thread in the act of mending, evokes my feminine need for nurturing and healing. On the other hand, the women’s’ faces in irons serve to remind me of forgotten women bound to the house and saddled with domestic shores.  In fact, the issue of women’s’ labor and its place in society is demonstrated through my need for obsessive sewing and in the repetition of various elements of my work.

Another important aspect of this work is the continual referencing to childhood as seen in the girl’s dresses, shoes, etc.  Childhood also represents a part of a life history—a fragment of a whole.  In a psychological sense, childhood lays the foundation for adulthood.  I use “miniaturization” deliberately as a device to evoke a child’s point of view.  The irony being that reducing the size of the object (dresses, shoes, pears, etc.) actually magnifies its importance.  As Susan Stuart in “On Longing” said: “Although the miniature makes the body gigantic, the gigantic transforms the body into miniature”.  Both miniature and gigantic involve the selection of elements that will be transformed and displayed in an exaggerated relation to the social construct of reality”.  The Alice inWonderland change in scale as seen in the oversize needle and the miniature pear, both serving to draw attention to themselves. 

Much of this work is black.  This represents an intentional decision on my part to create the aura of a memorial dedicated to the forgotten, the abandoned or the forlorn.  The ghostly quality of the photograms entitled “Ex-Rays” contributes to an overall sense of history and inheritance in the work.  By using elements from another era, like irons or a baby carriage juxtaposed to a modern cocktail dress, I have attempted to evoke a sense of time, both past and present, much like the feeling one would get from looking at a family scrap book or rummaging through an attic.  The act of remembering is heightened through the choice of nostalgic “found objects.”

The art of assemblage has impacted me ever since I saw a retrospective of Joseph Cornell’s work at least 20 years ago at MOMA.  There is something almost mystical or synchronistic about finding the right object for a piece of work.  Sometimes a thing that I purchase inspires me and sometimes an idea sparks a search for just the right item.  Either way, this part of my process is both challenging and rewarding.  My mother used to collect miniatures.  She had a beautiful glass curio cabinet full of miniature treasures that she would take out of the cabinet to show house guests.  The small objects that are a part of this body of work feel related to the wonders my mother collected.  I have always felt that my decision to concentrate on three dimensional objects as opposed to painting is due in part to my mother’s fascination with “things”.  The practice of collecting is integral to my act of making things.