Elizabeth Faye Wheeler

Region: MFA Annual

City / State: Iowa City, IA

 Shadows emote, checkered grids undulate, and space collapses. The table sits awkwardly, unaware of its significance. An ambiguous memory shapes their meaning. Images of grid, shadow, table, and space are made to replicate moments in memory and of consciousness. There is familiarity with ambiguity. These objects are created by thought and memory of my family and my home. Memory that took place in a gridded space: spilling orange juice on my grandmother’s formica tile floor, baths in the pink-tile bathroom, ghosts in the kitchen, becoming friends with my shadow. These are memories of spaces, these are physical spaces, and these are abstractions of spaces. These are headspaces, flat spaces, deep spaces, twisting, gridded, warped, unstable, dark and light spaces. This is a world inside our world, a place for emotions and memories to linger and manifest. Sadness, anxiety, and pain live here and have created their own consciousness. This world has room for growth and room for change. There is hope in the shadows.