On Display: Making + Memory

Pictures and Poems can spark a memory of our own or allow us to visualize someone else’s memory in our mind’s eye.  How we draw from or suppress memories influences the stories we tell about ourselves and our world.

To make his smoke paintings currently on exhibit in the RSM Gallery, Charles Suggs works from memory and photographs to create his smoke paintings. The portraits, with their soft black and white shapes, look like a memory set on a page. As Suggs says in his Artist Statement "The smoke acts as a metaphor for memory, weaving in and out, dangling on the consciousness like a thread. It delves into the otherworldly, making the viewer question whether these are just memories or haunted figures."  Inspired by the exhibition we selected nonfiction and poetry books that speak to how personal, cultural, and collective memory is made and shaped. 

Making + Memory: Selections Inspired by the Art of Charles Suggs is on display in the lobby and online until October 22.