Poetic Juxtaposition

© Catherine Nash "Spiral"

I resonate with the Japanese aesthetics of wabi and sabi...the difficult to-put-in-words atmospheres created through the arts...concepts of solitude, simplicity, longing and the passage of time. Poetic assemblage [the act of juxtaposing antique, vintage and found-objects with color and drawing] offers me a very different window through which to explore deep experiences of nature and the metaphysics of place and memory.

The vertical works on hand split redwood shingles were created during a 3 week residency in the studio of the late painter Morris Graves near Eureka, California.  With permission of the M.G.'s Foundation, these beeswax collages incorporate found elements from Grave’s studio with my own handmade papers.  The hand-split redwood shingles, pulled from the wood stove's tinder pile, came from his original house.  Recent works are intimate assemblages composed within old drawers or cabinets.