Dymphna de Wild: Connecting Fragments
Dymphna de Wild: Connecting Fragments
Sept. 8 - October. 23, 2021
An artist interview video will be posted on olivetartexhibitions.com Saturday, Oct. 9
Bio:
Dymph de Wild was born in the Netherlands and immigrated to the U.S. in 2006. She received her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art + Design and earned her MFA from James Madison University. Growing up, de Wild would build tree houses in the forest near her home and would construct homemade circus tents to perform backyard hocus pocus tricks for her neighbors. This sense of play, still visible in her art practice today, is somewhat Dada-inspired. De Wild has been working and exhibiting in the U.S., Europe, and Africa as a conceptual visual artist. She teaches studio art at James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Artist Statement:
For the last four years, I have been creating handbound books as a record keeping of my thoughts. I fill them with stories about my work, readings, imaginations, and memories. I draw, paint and collage my photographs and other images onto the pages while working in silence, listening and breathing. John Cage said that deep listening creates a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair. This intentional stillness can then infiltrate our imaginations (When Women were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams, p. 65). And each time I listen, I escape to another, surrealistic world.
The books offer a space for happy accidents and inventiveness. The qualities of flexibility, spontaneity, and patience have always been a part of my creative process. I let the materials guide the result rather than following any preconceived ideas or plans. Through Surrealist techniques of de-constructing, re-constructing, appropriating, cutting-up, fragmenting, assembling and distorting, I attempt to discover a new balance within a precariousness of parts. My books are my survival mechanism as they let me cope with the vast amount of global information coming into my life, when browsing the internet and using other digital media. Every time, an empty page becomes a whispering possibility.
