Memento (If These Walls Could Talk).  2006. 
(Dimensions variable.)  Gouache and archival ink jet prints on Japanese gampi paper, acrylic and latex paint, wood. (Installed 2006;
Glyndor Gallery in Wave Hill, Bronx, NY for Survive/Thrive/Alive exhibition.)

Invited to develop an installation addressing the theme of "survival" in the Glyndor Gallery at Wave Hill, I focused on the history of the building, itself, to create a site-specific work emphasizing the importance of memory to our existence. My goal was to mark the site's past as dynamic to the present, evoking a sense of temporal location for the viewer. After researching the history of the location as a private estate and, then, public garden from the mid 1800's to the present, I became interested in the Chinese wisteria (Wisteria Sinesis) that surrounds the building today - a plant that is over 100 years old and has survived three reconstructions of the site.

I created multiple narratives through my research, printing and embedding the texts directly into the gallery walls to evoke simultaneous frames for thinking about history: these referenced the personal, biological, and the geological. I was interested in establishing a sense of history as comprised of interwoven "events" as the texts evoked a series of whispering "voices" emerging from the walls. Gouache paintings on translucent Japanese gampi paper of wisteria seed pods were attached to the walls, partially obscuring the texts they overlaid. A historical photograph (c. 1920s) of the room was enlarged and placed in a frame over the fireplace. Additional photographs of the porch and the wisteria plant from the same time period were printed onto gampi paper and attached to the window frames, which acted as light boxes illuminating the images. The center panes of the windows were left open, as the wall texts encouraged viewers to make connections between the present environment and the historical narratives.