Corey Drieth and Margaret Kasahara - FUGITIVE

“It’s your life. Take note.” – At-A-Glance DayMinder

When Corey and I selected to utilize commonplace office and school supplies for this exhibition, I was immediately drawn to the lighthearted relatability of the materials and the fugitive properties of the inks and papers. During the process of making the work, the materials developed expressive potential and revealed metaphorical resonance – including current societal tensions and concerns, the inevitability of change and loss, and the passage of time.

-Margaret Kasahara

When discussing a direction for this show last year, Margaret and I decided to key-in on some of the fundamental qualities we both share as artists. At the center of this overlap is our similar artistic sensibilities; we both are compelled to create intimate
and subtle objects and approach making art slowly and with care. In addition, we share a passion for using non-traditional, everyday materials in our practice. So, for this exhibition we decided to use fugitive materials (non-archival or unstable) - particularly office and school supplies – as our point of departure.

As we started working, we began thinking about the meaning of the term fugitive in a wider, more poetic sense. When applied to materials such as school and office supplies, it led me to consider the relationship between innocence and experience, transformation, and memory. My initial approach was to try to recover some of the dramatic aesthetic qualities of my world growing up in the 1970s and 80s.

However, the longer I experimented, the more themes that have defined my artistic practice for decades showed up in the studio with me. These themes are rooted in my childhood, and I have cultivated them as an adult through my ongoing curiosity about the natural world, my interest in comparative religious studies, and my study of art history. Such themes include contemplation, mysticism, and the relationship between natural and human-made and environments.

In the end, I found that these collages orbit my identity as fugitive, an identity we all share in different ways. For me it relates to being a person who constantly moves back-and-forth between childhood and adulthood, inspiration and effort, nature and culture, and between spiritual revelation and theological instruction. However, my goal isn’t to share anything biographical or conceptual. Instead, I see pertinence in the work’s expressive qualities: Collages that  feel innocent and precious, familiar and strange, absurd and funny, and surprisingly beautiful. Ultimately, for me the value of this work relates back to what the photographer Frederick Sommer said: “Art is the splendor of reality before everything has become meaning.”

-Corey Drieth