Meichen Waxer

Aurora seriously catalyzed my critical investigations into what is understood as “traditional” in North American domestic ornamentation through considerations of complicated and intertwined histories, commerce, personal memory and taste.

Emphasized around sets of gestural responses to materials; these are drawing, casting, tracing, folding, cutting, and staging. These gestures invite viewers to think through their own understanding of domestic ornamentation and inherited social structures, as they focus on perceptions of appropriation, nostalgia, monumentality and memory.

Resounding through this two year development was the networks of associations to the self, class and history that resound through the maintenance of domestic ornamentation. These networks are not static and fluctuate through trend, social norms and ideas surrounding domesticity. Thus it is paramount that in the creation of works invested in this dialogue that ambiguity is facilitated to gain entry into layered, and possibly contradictory associations to the ornamentation of the home. The accumulation of my cultural identity, lived experience, influences and biases will continue to be investigated and articulated through my practice vis-à-vis symbolic socially constructed materials and beliefs.

Masters Thesis Work, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, 2014 - 2016

PROVENCE BLUE

Provence Blue. The colour and depth of texture of the velvet love seat are imbedded in my mind and in the skin of my palms and the pads of my fingertips. I would sit neatly as not to brush the velvet in the wrong direction and make believe. The pile on the red, white, pink and yellow Chinese carpet was almost tall enough to graze the tips of my dangling toes. In front of me, a pair of red floral wing back chairs acted as pillars to the wash of light that flooded through the lace curtains, hanging behind the silk flowers forever blooming in the ceramic washing basin and jug on the bay window ledge. In this light the flowers of walls, furniture, ceiling, and floor became my secret garden.

DUSTY ROSE

I thought it was up to me, the choice of what would adorn my walls. I picked a paper with tiny pale yellow butterflies evenly spread across an eggshell backdrop. Like the pinned butterflies my Bubbie kept behind glass. But, I was told, I would grow bored of it; instead three floral papers were selected. Over my bed and on the wall that slanted with the pitch of the roof blossomed peonies in pink and purple. Behind the armoire and desk was a textured paper painted dusty rose that echoed the patterns of a tin ceiling. Crowning the room in an eternal spring, a border of tiny pink flowers. It was all a bit much.

NAPOLÉON

We used to have two cast iron wood-burning stoves, one at the back of the house just past the kitchen, and the other in an alcove off of the first flight of stairs. The first five years of my life were scented with firewood. One day I was practicing ballet in front of the stove upstairs. Proud of my plié I unwittingly backed up into stove, scalding my behind, which was in a flash dropped into a bath of ice. The stoves were soon traded for an upright piano, on whose bench I sat.My music room, which flowed from the parlour, was papered in a dark William Morris print of undulating birds and flowers on a black backdrop. To my back a large Québec armoire and in the windowsill potted jade plants. On the wall a framed letter with wax seal, which I pretended was from Napoléon. Perhaps because he was the only commander whose name I knew off-hand.