Dreamy Mixed Media Boats
Lovely little boats by mixed media artist Kathleen Koopman are floating in the window at FOUND on a dreamy voyage. The sailboats have dainty handkerchiefs or recycled fabrics as sails and float through the air like something out of a bedtime story.
Others tell a story of companionship. Birds join in the journey. We asked Kathleen to share her inspiration for these dreamy boats:I'm part collector, part archivist, part archaeologist, and part researcher. I find things, arrange them, organize them, and display them.
My work for the past several years has focused on the assemblage of found objects, scraps, photographs, fiber, and paper, to create a narrative with memories and dreams intertwined.
I draw from a collection of artifacts, found: junk stores, the street, the landscape, the pathways of life: items cast off and abandoned, waiting for the opportunity tell their stories, effected by time and memory.
Constructing boats rose out of that process, out of these materials, as an extension of the assemblage process, and the inspiration grew fueled by the metaphors: voyages, sailing, hulls, rigging, sails, navigation driven by the vagaries of wind and water: discovery, travel, wandering.
Bon Voyage!
Kathleen Koopman. July 2014.