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 Pale Preoccupation
Touching the past with a pen dipped in ink
When I was small, I remember lying on my back under a side table in my
Grandparents' house. The tabletop was a round slab of marble, out of which
grew a lamp with lead crystal teardrops dangling from a filigree bloom .
There was a circlet of these crystals beneath the lamp as well and I watched
the front parlor glow in the half-light reflected from these tiny worlds of
faceted glass. In that private world just a few inches from the floor, the
chairs all had carved feet on the bottom and way above me near the ceiling I
could see the undersides of little animal faces in the corners of the
mouldings. I would climb up the steep stairs to the dusty attic with crates
of 45 records and the secret-seeming low doors to mysterious things in storage in
the eaves. Sometimes I would hide myself in the tiny sewing room under the
stairs or spend hours pawing through Grammy’s costume jewelry, trying on
clip-on earrings and peeking into lockets. One day I came into my
grandparents’ house and everything looked different. The tiny details were
still there, but I was too tall to see them so intimately anymore. Some of
the magic had disappeared. I have been trying to get back to that magical
world ever since.
This series holds all the nostalgia and strange faces of my past.
I wanted to know what was inside, what was under, what was behind things. I
still do.
Come into the wardrobe with me, let the smell of old faded minks brush your
face and peek with me up onto the high shelf filled with hatboxes and
secrets…
-Liese Martin
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© All of the images on this website are copyrighted original artworks by their author and are protected by international copyright law. No materials in this gallery may be reproduced, copied, downloaded, or used in any form without written permission of the contemporary artist Liese Martin.
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