Timekeepers

Timekeepers

by Anna Pugh (’18)

FEBRUARY 26 – MARCH 22, 2024

stArt.rv (Reynolda Village)

“Shadows become like memory

Recording becomes like remembering 

What truths hide in distortion?

What time passes without light?

What fictions appear when details fade? 

Shadow is both true and changed, both personally and externally influenced, both material and time-based, and so it becomes an embodiment of memory. 

I gather memories from the woods near my home in Tennessee, from ceremonial bouquets, and from discarded decorations. Dormant snakeroot, porch moths, funeral flowers, garden weeds. I am intrigued by fragile mementos and our fleeting attempts to preserve moments with things that decay to time just as our memories do. 

These works are created using shadows of these objects. I play with recording shadows as flowers decay and dry, I record at different times and with different angles of light, I layer objects over themselves, and invert spaces and light sources. Some of the works have a phosphorescent base – the shadows becoming the source of light. The works are not unlike cyanotypes but through my participation, the act of painting mirrors the altering act of remembering. What truths and fictions stay when details fade? Our personal memories may be different, but reduced to the shadow of an object their outer contours begin to resemble something familiar and innately understandable.

These works are timekeepers, recordings, liars, little worlds, and at their underbelly they are about loss, what rushes into the void, and searching for the unsearchable.”