Sylvia Mendel - Schemes

Sylvia Mendel

War exigencies profoundly influenced my life and work. My folded papers containing images and text are coded journals expressing thoughts that represent the complexity of human beings often unrecognized by in our waking lives. The art I feel compelled to make cannot help but reflect my life in all its complexity - even if I am unaware of how that happens. I hope to seduce viewers to look closely, then subvert them to curiosity about something not previously valued. I find materials and use them beyond their original intent to express another intent not always apparent. The process of making my pieces is as important as the finished product. I might keep found materials for years before incorporating them in a piece. Schemes was a long process. I found architectural blueprints in a garbage bin outside the United Nations in 1996, stored them in a mailing tube, forgot about them till they dropped on my head when I slammed the closet door. I began to fold the blueprints and finished the piece some years later. The pods pictured on my blog are from the honey locust tree. I collect them in the fall and glue papers on them for preservation. They are hung where I can see them and at some time - again it could be years, I cover them with fine art papers on which I have written poems about love and war. I give these as gifts but plan to show them grouped in a bigger piece. With the work "Lysistrata" (on the blog) one of the collage images in the folds - to my mind symbolic of war - is from a 1947 dictionary and shows a figure covered head to toe with bandages. There's humor for me in the excess of the definition. Yet, I have had dreams of war in which I see such figures with blood seeping through the bandages. Thus, irony is in the pieces while the works themselves appeal for other qualities. The title reflects a wish I'd like to make come true. I resist genre placement viewing myself as an outsider for the ways in which history, politics, gender, prejudice and age have shaped my life. http://www.sylviamendel.com/.