Ginger Owen-Murakami & Vicki VanAmeyden: Heritage Habitats

Much like making rope, collaboration bonds individuals to create something larger and stronger than they could ever be separately. Ginger Owen-Murakami and Vicki VanAmeyden began collaborating on art works in 2009. Their ongoing efforts have resulted in a collection of six, large-scale installation works that comprise Heritage Habitats. 

Heritage Habitats is a series of physical spaces for contemplation and invocation of ancestry. Framed around nostalgia and memory, "Kites", "Cairn", and "Hankies" are large-scale, sculptural and experiential installations that engage in viewers’ unique memories and experiences.  In essence, the work emphasizes commonalities that bind people and cultures and serve as an expression of humanism.

Methods for creating these works involve appropriating imagery from our respective family albums and vintage "National Geographic" magazines, and then, framing our ideas around the experience generated from remembering our past. The images we select are iconic in nature. They reference concepts linked to blueprints of identity and help us to find our place in a larger historical picture. We value history and tradition as the staples of human life while acknowledging that representations of realities are altered by elapsed time and convoluted memories.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.