Spotlight on the Flatfiles: A Portrait of My Mother, an exhibition of recent work by Meridith McNeal opens Friday, January 4th from 6-8pm at Kentler International Drawing Space, 353 Van Brunt Street, in Red Hook Brooklyn. The exhibition will be on view through February 10, 2019.
Mother sets the stage for us. She encourages, pesters, creates opportunities and provides the space in which we become ourselves. Once our mother is gone her objects and her space become something more than mere objects. Look carefully, they have become Magical Things.
Magical Things, my ongoing series of watercolors, venerate the easily overlooked objects of everyday life: paperback novels, a thermos, a pencil sharpener. Mundane objects become totems, Milagros—charms of mindfulness, imbued with a power greater than the sum of their parts. Several months ago, after my mother died, I began a trajectory of this work Magical Things From My Mother’s House.
Included in A Portrait of My Mother are portraits of objects that belonged to my mother, Brenda McNeal. Most are depicted in my own Brooklyn home; in their new surroundings they become both memorial and useful objects.
Also on view are larger Windowphilia pieces, the last of my artwork which I discussed with my mother. Inside/Outside: London (Violins), spurred her to reminisce about the music store in Fall River, MA which she frequented with her grandfather. When Bren looked at Inside/Outside: London Windowphilia (Records)she recalled with humor my nursery school days in London when I related after school with consternation: “Mommy, they don’t have records here. They have reCORDs.”
In addition to the opening, there will be a special event during the exhibition that I hope you will join me for: On Sunday January 13 at 2pm I will host (in the tradition of my mother!) a Sunday Soiree, a pot-luck feast amongst the art to honor my mother’s tradition of gathering friends for witty, intelligent, art-filled fierce conversation over good food. Join me and you too will become part of the magic.
Please mark your calendars, it will so much better if you are there to celebrate with me!
