Mary Bogdan >
A Book About Death - MoMA WALES, Triptych, mixed media assemblage (re-cycling of collected art postcards), 2010.
This Triptych is my submission to this new chapter in ABAD. A series of art postcards I've collected over a period of time from many different locations/venues, which I've crumpled-up or folded, and married them together to create this hanging piece, a series of three. I've also embroidered the words "a book about death" on the ribbons attached. After the exhibition in May, this piece will remain in the collection of MoMA Wales.
Each piece is approx.
36 in x 4 in.
MoMA WALES – MUSEUM OF MODERN ART | WALES UK Contributing artists from around the world are participating in this critical part and new chapter in the exhibition of A Book About Death at MoMA Wales, organized by Sonja Benskin Mesher RCA, including the original postcards from the Emily Harvey Foundation exhibition in NYC.
MARY BOGDAN @ MoMA WALES Museum of Modern Art, Wales, UK Apr 27 - May 8, 2010
A project by Matthew Rose abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com
MoMA Wales
Museum Of Modern Art, Wales
and The Tabernacle
Heol Penrallt, Machynlleth
Powys SY20 8AJ
Wales, UK.
Artist Mary Bogdan created this poster for “A Book About Death” exhibition at MoMA Wales UK. Mary is an artist who participated in the Emily Harvey Foundation exhibition for A Book About Death. The exhibition in Wales is being organized by Sonja Benskin Mesher.
The exhibition runs from 27 April through 8 May 2010.
click images to enlarge
Click to watch video.
OPENING EVENT
TUESDAY APRIL 27th starting 10 am
A ceremonial unpacking of the original postcards from New York City will be installed in silence, while the names of the artists will be written into ‘The Book of the Living’.
“A Book About Death” is a collaborative project conceived by American artist Matthew Rose for the Emily Harvey Foundation in New York City, where the original exhibition took place from September 10 – 22, 2009. The exhibition paid special homage to Ray Johnson (1927-1995), acknowledged as the “Father of Mail Art”. And the project, in its sprawling global reach explored how we celebrate memory and death.”
The exhibition opened with a packed house, and a line snaking up Broadway more than 500 people long waiting to get in the doors to make their own book. Since then, the exhibition has traveled to MUBE - Museu Brasileiro da Escultura in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Otis College of Art and Design in LA; The River Mill Art Gallery in New Jersey; The Mobius Gallery in Boston, MA; The Queens Museum in Queens, NY; The Sexta Literary Arts Festival in Tijuana, Mexico; San Diego State University in Calexico, CA; as well as other venues in Belgium, Sarajevo and Croatia.
Complete sets of “A Book About Death" have entered into the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, and the LA County Museum of Art Research Library.
History of the project so far: abookaboutdeatharchive.blogspot.com
A BOOK ABOUT DEATH, original postcard 4 x 6 inches
myFather/myself: ode to alojz, 2003, combine painting This piece is a hommage to my father... who was the greatest influence in my early chilhood.
On the day of his funeral, I wrote my father a letter on one of his patterns which I’d already painted on sometime earlier, because I wanted to give him something and leave something with him. I wrote on it as I cried and my tears are there, too. I folded it and closed it up and tied it up with rope and left it with him. My hands on his patterns. It was buried with him.
This is about my father and me and my family history. It was made just before his death when I was totally obsessed with his extremely slow and long dying process.
I found this old-fashioned wooden key cabinet at a thrift shop. I worked on it, using my father’s dress patterns that he’d made as a tailor. There had been literally thousands of them in the garage and in the basement where he used to work. I took only a few carefully chosen pieces after his death.
On the inside I included a small child’s tool set and used very specific items that reminded me of my father. The very short, worn- down pencil (he was notorious for using short pencils), spools of thread, the “A” alphabet block letter, tailor’s wooden ruler, a leveling tool, a picture of my family when I was 6 months old, the large paint brush as a flame nailed to a small christian prayer book inside a frame, all on top of a Hebrew Rabbinical College diploma. And throughout are hand-written letters to my father as I painted... very emotional letters. I could not speak the words to him directly.
I attached two large thread spoons as handles on the outside of this cabinet and tied it with rope
cord to keep it closed. It is about 4 feet high - the height of a child.
> Click here to see photos of the exhibition.
© copyright 2010, Mary Bogdan web design: crayon design & communication