Robin VanHoozer: Echoes Through Time

Exhibition Website

Apr 12 2019 - Jun 2 2019

In this exhibition, the artist works to reveal the invisible routine of daily tasks typically performed by women and essential for life. Robin VanHoozer was inspired by her grandmother, whose journals document raising a family of eight children in rural Weston, Missouri. Robin states that, “Her words echo to me across time…. The importance she placed on documenting her day-to-day work inspired me to learn how women lived in her time and place. While so much has clearly changed for women in the twenty-first century, the daily tasks women perform remain much the same.”

Ms. VanHoozer’s work explores themes of time, gender, work, and resolve using encaustic and mixed media. Woven through the exhibition are the female form and household objects used daily.

Composed of four major collections of work, Echoes Through Time consists of the Chambers and Books of Life, Catwalk, Internals, and Memory Storage. Each collection contains seven pieces, one for each day of the week. The artist uses encaustic paint in a variety of applications throughout the collections—for example, dipping the book pages in transparent wax medium or ironing on more opaque paint for the dresses. The installation will be staged in seven areas. At the heart of Echoes Through Time are the Books and Chambers of Life, handmade books cradled in painted wooden boxes that I call chambers. The chambers represent secret rooms in which to store the books of photographs, recipes, and personal snippets from her grandmother’s unspoken thoughts. This collection will be displayed on a table. The second collection, Internals, are life-size dresses sewn from paper with encaustic and presented on mannequins suspended, ghost like, from the ceiling. Throughout the installation will be a collection of large graphite and pastel drawings titled Catwalk. These are inspired by classic popular dress designs and are reminders of the feminine ideal. Memory Storage is a series of assemblage pieces with household objects that complete the domestic scene. The culmination of the exhibition will be Nothing to Hang Onto, a large wall piece comprised of rope, bone, lace, graphite, and encaustic. This culminating work sums up the struggle to survive when everything slips away and signals the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Echoes Through Time will chronicle a life’s daily journey and open a window into the strength and fragility of life.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website 

  • Mixed-media
  • American
  • Contemporary
  • Ethnic / Gender
  • Robin VanHoozer

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