Ann Marie Penaz at CSPS

ANN MARIE PENAZ
Bringing It to Bear (I Was Always Falling Off the Edge
of the World)
St. Paul artist Ann Marie Penaz unveils a new, site-specific installation exploring childhood memories, Minnesota winters, and the act of creation. Designed especially for CSPS, the sprawling, quietly evocative work comprises silkscreens on glass; sculptural forms made of flocked cotton batting; electrical cables and black light flood lamps; blueprints and text; hand-carved snow goggles; timber and other materials.
The artist writes, "Bringing It to Bear (I Was Always Falling Off the Edge of the World) is an expression of the landscape of my childhood. By exploring this winter landscape, I've tried to address ideas about the making activities of that formative time, and about the task of making in general, particularly as a way of actively confronting the void.
"Snow was my first material. Available playtime in the winter months was spent outdoors carving objects from the giant snow-mounds that my father made as he shoveled the walks and driveway. The beauty and immensity of this display both delighted and frightened me. The stars of the clear, cold winter night sky were, too, at once gorgeous and lonely. I felt in these times, a great sense of nothingness which, as a child, I did not understand.
"So, I made things. The white backsides of the discarded blueprints which my electrician father brought home for me and my siblings to draw on were fabulously huge pieces of paper on which to give our imaginations free reign. I was given bits of wood and cans of left-over paint, and tools with which to use these materials. My namesake aunt taught me how to sew. And I spent a great deal of time, in the winter, outside in the snow.
"In retrospect, it seems that my entire childhood was spent making things in an innocent bliss tinged with an unsettled, indescribable awareness of space, emptiness, and loss. I've tried to bring these first sixteen years to bear by making the installation Bringing It to Bear for CSPS."
Exhibit Nov 28 - Jan 27
CSPS | 1103 Third St SE | Cedar Rapids
Open Weds through Sun 11 to 6

About the artist
Ann Marie Penaz received her MFA in printmaking from the University of Minnesota. For over a decade she worked as part of a two-person collaboration called Red Shift, producing multimedia installations consisting of photographs, large wall projections, text, drawings, three-dimensional objects and sonic components. Among Red Shift's works was the installation Plexus 45'N-42'N, created at and for CSPS in May 1993.
Since the demise of Red Shift, Ann has presented a number of installations in private settings, including Outside, Bad Weather; Not the Star-Map of My Eyes, and The Way You are Only Winging It. She currently works writes, and makes art in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she lives with a beloved dog, two irascible cats, and way too many pairs of shoes. Her wall piece Fifteen for Fifteen, produced in 2006 for the fifteenth anniversary of CSPS, is in the collection of David and Lijun Chadima, and is installed on the second floor of the Cherry Building in Cedar Rapids.

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Click here for a downloadable gallery guide (PDF)