Sisters are our first friends.
The Soeurreal Memory Project builds on my interest in creativity and relationship, fed by six dynamic decades with my own two sisters. I am always curious about the places where shared histories intersect, where memories are in harmony or discord. Where might healing arise, or humor? The project name combines soeur – French for sister – and surreal – incongruous, fantastic, resembling a dream. Playing with what is real in shared experiences between sisters, using slices of my own, my siblings’, and others' lives, I render like and disparate remembered elements into works of music and visual art.
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I am interested in the scale and importance that memories hold for one individual in relation to the memories of another; I am curious about what may exist between these discrete realities. I believe that emotional matters can be confused and convoluted when approached solely through the head, that passions may become clearer when seen through visual art, through poetry. I nudge the elements of this inquiry toward classic fairy tale sensibility; one sister’s ally is another sister’s obstacle, and we all have our magical objects, our heroic tasks. The memories of each sister form a landscape of her particular set of truths; taken together, they may show the seismic activity of a relationship over time. I bring form to these elements as artifacts of the family, in children’s game boards, paper dolls, and songs.
The Soeurreal project works to organize experiences into interesting, disturbing, or beautiful visual objects and songs, representations of the resonance and dissonance in women’s relationships. In using our senses, we may better understand and accept ourselves and our sisters, and the greater will be the opportunity for strong woman-alliance, for the health of Earth herself.