Art / Kelda Martensen

 From the artist

:: Account ::

These works aim to com­mu­ni­cate the unre­solved and to illu­mi­nate the poet­ics of home and dis­place­ment. I cre­ate and repo­si­tion forms on the sur­face to allow for phys­i­cal move­ment with­in the frame and the free asso­ci­a­tion of process, con­cept and mate­r­i­al. I see col­lage as a code, a way of think­ing and a vehi­cle for approach­ing a con­cep­tu­al des­ti­na­tion. With col­lage, mem­o­ry and cur­rent expe­ri­ence can exist on one plane. I use archi­tec­tur­al sym­bols (doors, roofs, sid­ing, hard­wood floors) in order to speak to ideas of place – specif­i­cal­ly how mem­o­ries of home and place are altered through cur­rent expe­ri­ence yet are for­ev­er asso­ci­at­ed with the archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures of the past. I don’t see the past iso­lat­ed from the present and so gath­er and cre­ate rep­re­sen­ta­tions (pho­tos, draw­ings, prints) from places I’ve lived at dif­fer­ent times in my life and cre­ate new rela­tion­ships between seem­ing­ly incom­pat­i­ble and dis­parate icons.

The reeval­u­a­tion and repo­si­tion­ing of these images is a way for the view­er to trav­el with­in the work and to expe­ri­ence mul­ti­plic­i­ty with­in the frame. My pas­sion in art mak­ing is both in the fixed, graph­ic mark of the print, and the more mobile and reac­tive tra­di­tion of draw­ing and col­lage. Through the col­laps­ing of images and expe­ri­ences, my work aims to dis­rupt the lin­ear plane and allow for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of new meaning. 

Kel­da Martensen main­tains a stu­dio prac­tice based in paper, book and print arts. She serves as full-time visu­al arts fac­ul­ty at North Seat­tle Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege and received her MFA in Visu­al Art from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visu­al Art at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis. Kel­da was born in Taco­ma, Wash­ing­ton and lives and works in Seat­tle. She can be found at www.keldamartensen.com.