Weaving in Souvenirs of the Past
By Donald Munro, The Fresno Bee, Calif.
Apr. 14–Photographs capture fleeting moments. Then they exist in this weird state of permanence. Think about it: There likely are thousands of versions of you frozen in time floating around this world, ranging from the traditional hospital shot of you resting your newborn head against your mother’s chest to the less-than-flattering view someone took of you last Sunday stuffing sour-cream-and-onion dip in your mouth at a Super Bowl party.
Are any of those photos really you? Of course not, at least not exactly; we all move on. But to see just one of them — isolated in time and context — is to contemplate the idea of memory. As long as someone remembers the person in that photo — whether by personal association, historical awareness or family connection — it’s as if you can still sense the life presence.
But what happens when the memories fade? What happens to the countless photographs of us that will slip into obscurity over the coming decades or centuries, most stuck first in a drawer somewhere or banished to a hard drive, then cooped up in an attic or a brittle CD, then finally (and unceremoniously) dumped?
Nancy Youdelman’s art always has sparked a bittersweet reaction in me. On one hand, her work, in which she transforms items of clothing into art by attaching such found objects as buttons, costume jewelry and zippers and then slathering them with layers of acrylic metallic paint, has a stately elegance to it: a Victorian-era feel of self- assurance and continuity. You can imagine it lasting for a very long period.
On the other hand, there’s a deep sense of melancholy — of time whooshing by — in her work. Youdelman has collected old photographs for years, and she often incorporates them into her art. In her current exhibition, which runs through Feb. 26 in a nice joint show with Aimee Frost at Gallery 25, she uses old letters as well. Most of the people represented in these photos and correspondence long have been forgotten by the people important to them. They’re nothing more than bundles that you might find at an antique store or, increasingly common, listed on eBay.
But Youdelman rescues them, in a sense.
In “Rotten and Gone,” a small child’s slip that went beneath a dress has become a sturdy garment that looks like a pugnacious halter top. It’s covered with tintype photos, those old shots taken at slow shutter speeds that required subjects to stand still for long exposures. Thus there are no smiles, no spontaneity, just a formal, somber presence. On the front, the photos are women and girls; on the back, they’re men and boys.
I stare for a long time into each of these faces. Who were they? What were they thinking? Did they ever think about what would happen to these photos when they were gone?
The title of the work, Youdelman says, refers to death, of course. “It really reminds me of when I was a kid,” she says. “We spent a lot of time at the cemetery. Some of the graves, especially in the Armenian cemeteries, have photos.”
Yet the result is more than just a grave marker. These photos have been completely freed of any corporeal connection with the people they represent; the photos, in fact, are anything but rotten and gone. They live on.
In “Foolish Mistakes,” Youdelman uses a bundle of old love letters written in the 1930s. The author was in love with a man, but her words were so boring that even she admitted that she didn’t have much to say. Filled with minutiae about the weather and other stale topics, the letters weren’t exactly heart-pounding.
So Youdelman cut the letters into strips and used them in her work. Destined for oblivion even when it was fresh, the correspondence takes on a whole new aesthetic journey even while the words themselves have been rendered unintelligible.
The artist is a longtime fixture on the Fresno art scene, having studied in the early 1970s with Judy Chicago in the feminist art program at California State University, Fresno. She’s a professor there now, and she’s a working artist who in the past year was awarded a prestigious grant from the Pollock/Krasner Foundation.
In one of her newest works in the show, titled “Trappings,” Youdelman plays on the double meaning of the word: one’s trappings can be another word for clothes, but it can also suggest a sense of confinement. Traditionally, women who sewed never were credited as artists. In this work, a large dress is covered with layers of buttons and pins, and in the trademark fashion of the artist, has a dark, monochromatic hue.
But there’s something different: dozens of old- fashioned wooden spools of brightly colored thread sprinkled on top. While making the work, Youdelman had thought she’d use old photographs as the final touch, as she typically does, but at the last minute she was seized with another idea: Why not use vibrant splashes of red, green, blue, yellow and other colors that represent a way of life gone by?
It’s a bold effect, and it works. Whether using old spools of thread, old letters or — most dramatically — old photographs, Youdelman continues to craft meaningful and illuminating musings on memory. Her work resonates. It makes you ponder an inescapable fact: No one lives forever, but art can make it last a little longer.
The columnist can be reached at dmunro@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6373.
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