AMERICAN STILL LIFE, Installation, mixed media, 14 x 30 x 60, Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT 2001
When I was invited to develop an installation for the Yellowstone Art Museum, I was motivated to make a piece about our collective history as descendants of immigrants, where the past is reconstructed from the objects we carry with us. This is the world of still life, where "the memory of the body is replaced by the memory of the object".[Susan Stewart, On Longing] While these inert objects give us pleasure, they also bring a sense of loss, turning the genre of still life into the site of nostalgia.