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Rosemary Powelson Artist Statement Suspended Chambers In the hospital the doctors and nurses told me that the human heart is the size of a fist. On the Internet I found out that it weighs nine to 10 ounces. After holding the human heart in the anatomy lab I know it feels about like the weight of a handful of earth. As a child I understood that a beating heart meant I was alive, but when my husband had a heart attack and bypass surgery in June, 2006, I also learned that hearts can be rescued, mechanically kept alive, and repaired.
Early on I coped by researching and studying the human heart, heart disease, and bypass surgery, and although this science was fascinating, I kept coming back to the idea of a stopped heart with a body tethered and kept alive by a machine. I also listened to my husband describe how he felt vacated and empty, how his core was gone when he was coming back to life after his surgery. I realized that for both of us time and space had been suspended, and I wanted to explore my experiences during the days between his broken heart and his healing heart.
Like most narrative artists, I use symbolic color to support the story. Red stands for blood, heat, or love, while blue is sky, water, or cold. Yellow symbolizes the sun and hope, green stands for renewal, and the light root beer brown color represents body fluids. I use materials and techniques that allow color to bleed, soak, run, pool, gather, and clot. Collage is a dominant process, and I am intrigued by its similarity to bypass surgery -- cutting and borrowing from one source and adding it into a new environment to create a fresh, alternative meaning.
My focus has shifted from the details of my husband’s heart attack and the life threatening complications that followed to an examination of the poetic and ethereal topography of the heart. The text forms a new layer of information, and the relief shapes create physical suspension and the addition of light. To allow intimacy I purposely leave the surface of the collages open to close inspection and the transformation of light.
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