Some Kind of Truth - Sheila Rotner

STATEMENT - CONTAINMENT SERIES

Two things came together – the scraps of wood that my neighbor, who is a building contractor, was throwing out; and a voice on the radio talking about ‘containing’ the bird flu epidemic. This resulted in the first object of containment for our show.

I found it to be a meaningful image for ‘Some Kind of Truth’ – for the truth of the necessity to contain and give order to the chaos of many aspects of our lives – the chaos of dis-ease - of our emotions, anger, fear, etc. The first wire mesh basket that I made contained wood pieces. I moved on to stones, glass, metal, and another wood piece set on fire and bandaged. I will make one of bones. I will make future baskets of wood pieces. They are the ones that fit my sense of geometry to my greatest satisfaction.

Another aspect of the ‘Truth’ that comes into the equation relates to the fact that I am packing up my studio to move to New York. The idea of containment allows me to save and contain many of the bits and pieces of chaos, which are the resources and inspiration for my work, and also products of studio activity. I now have containers for them!

It has been spiritually helpful to work on these pieces.

Sheila Rotner.