Ajean Lee Ryan
In 1998 I began making paintings and drawings into installations out of a need to find a more evocative and exploratory way of making art. I began with the knowledge that I wanted to make a drawing that extended into space. My motivations were to transform the drawing into a form that inhabited a room and took on manifestations of sculpture and installation all at the same time. My goal was to seek out forms that spoke directly to my consciousness and perceptions but also something that would be in opposition to what is historically considered drawing or painting. I am very interested in works that defy heroism and notions of the monolithic. My materials are usually frail, ephemeral and dispossessed. With that in mind, I chose to make drawings with string, insects out of matches and wire, molten skins of sneakers from my childhood out of tracing papers and bee-hives out of little pockets of air encased in plastic. The very materials that defined impermanence and instability called out and beckoned me.
.jpg "Ajean Lee Ryan - Untitled(Hearth)")
Although I am trained and adept in working with traditional materials such as oils on canvas, metals and wood, I choose to use common and mundane materials. I also naturally gravitate towards materials that resonate with what is historically considered feminine or used within the realm of domestic labor. For the past couple of years I have been making works which involve the use of fabrics and threads largely because I appreciated the airy and linear qualities it provides in both drawing and sculpture. Fabric, especially lace, is also a material that is completely non-functional in that it is fabric and yet it is full of delicate holes that can neither provide warmth nor protect one from the elements. The drawings I created using lace as subject matter were integral to my art-making practices at the time. Having just given birth to my daughter, I attempted many domestic handicrafts such as knitting and quilting but the only act that allowed me the psychological and metaphysical space were these incredibly detailed and laborious lace drawings that in a way were my own versions of domestic handicraft.
I currently work with yarns and fabrics with a variety of metals and within my paintings and drawings. I love the melding of materials- the hard against the soft and the transient against the resolute. I experiment with forms in an attempt to discover the beauty in disparate relationships and the ways in which ephemeral and frail components can take on a solidity all their own. I have many influences and artists whom I admire. Nature moves and inspires me more than any other influence. Each summer I watch and document the lives of the large garden spiders outside my kitchen window with their webs spanning more than four feet wide. One web inevitably caught a hummingbird this past summer. Much of my mohair yarn sculptures were inspired by these spiders. I envisioned the myth of Arachne and the gall she had to challenge the Gods. Every day I watched the spiders create and re-create their webs in an effort to nourish and shelter themselves and every day I was moved by their level of commitment and perfection to their task at hand. The very characteristics of these spiders: their meticulousness, their intuition as well as the sheer beauty they created on a daily basis captures and propels my imagination.
August 2008
