Bunnie Reiss & Monica Canilao
Little Old One
November 12th - Jan 7th
LoPo Gallery is excited to have in store
... Collaborative installations and New works by
Bunnie Reiss & Monica Canilao
Bunnie Reiss:
My natural state is a storyteller, cataloging and documenting all that I see. My urge to be at home everywhere leaves me in a place of collecting and arranging, investigating and reconstituting the relationship between new and old. I often feel as if I am inviting someone in, but at the same time searching for a home. I have never left that part of my childhood which allows me to reinvent tales in my head, creating situations that are partially true, partially invented, yet always entertaining. My ever-growing collection of objects and stories, events and residual leftovers is a gentle dialogue living simultaneously in the past and present, investigating the meaning of both private and community life. I study the forgotten, the stuff in the free box or on the side of the street. Our trash has become our totems. The objects become the trail and markings of people and happenings, telling tales of our constant struggle to find the ever-changing meaning of home and community. The most insignificant remnant can evoke an imaginary world out of reach except for that fragment. My urban folk art is really an idealized memory of a world based on a combination of possibility and nostalgia. One can only wonder whether this world actually exists. I try to take the limitations in our life and stretch them through fantasy, while at the same time using recycled materials to add an element of reality.
Monica Canilao:
My art practice generates a personal and living history that can be altered and reconsidered. It is a mode of communication with others transcending distance, time, and place. By taking something as ordinary as found wood pulp or cloth and passing thread through it, new things can be made beautiful or useful. The value and logic of reuse is something I have learned from the city itself, through recycling discarded items in every vein of my life. Collaboration and engagement with my environment are necessary. My work is my own means to give new voice to histories and experiences using remnants of past lives so readily discarded. By using images rooted in personal commonalities, I attempt to create a visual terminology that resonates beyond verbal and cultural differences. The importance falls not on the specific or the factual but in the feelings invoked by rendering endangered forms of expression, and the act of simply living. Exploring cities old and new to me, I discover my materials from that place's available waste/treasure, making each installation site-specific. My images and installations are contingent on the communities and experiences they draw upon. The direct relationship between the things I create and my daily experience—what I feel and what I find—allows my process and the result to evolve how it may. By using materials that carry traces of moments past, the compositions themselves are a reminder that we all bear scars from family histories that shape our desires, prejudices, and ability to adapt (or thrive). In the end the act of creating is about making living sacred.
... Collaborative installations and New works by
Bunnie Reiss & Monica Canilao
Bunnie Reiss:
My natural state is a storyteller, cataloging and documenting all that I see. My urge to be at home everywhere leaves me in a place of collecting and arranging, investigating and reconstituting the relationship between new and old. I often feel as if I am inviting someone in, but at the same time searching for a home. I have never left that part of my childhood which allows me to reinvent tales in my head, creating situations that are partially true, partially invented, yet always entertaining. My ever-growing collection of objects and stories, events and residual leftovers is a gentle dialogue living simultaneously in the past and present, investigating the meaning of both private and community life. I study the forgotten, the stuff in the free box or on the side of the street. Our trash has become our totems. The objects become the trail and markings of people and happenings, telling tales of our constant struggle to find the ever-changing meaning of home and community. The most insignificant remnant can evoke an imaginary world out of reach except for that fragment. My urban folk art is really an idealized memory of a world based on a combination of possibility and nostalgia. One can only wonder whether this world actually exists. I try to take the limitations in our life and stretch them through fantasy, while at the same time using recycled materials to add an element of reality.
Monica Canilao:
My art practice generates a personal and living history that can be altered and reconsidered. It is a mode of communication with others transcending distance, time, and place. By taking something as ordinary as found wood pulp or cloth and passing thread through it, new things can be made beautiful or useful. The value and logic of reuse is something I have learned from the city itself, through recycling discarded items in every vein of my life. Collaboration and engagement with my environment are necessary. My work is my own means to give new voice to histories and experiences using remnants of past lives so readily discarded. By using images rooted in personal commonalities, I attempt to create a visual terminology that resonates beyond verbal and cultural differences. The importance falls not on the specific or the factual but in the feelings invoked by rendering endangered forms of expression, and the act of simply living. Exploring cities old and new to me, I discover my materials from that place's available waste/treasure, making each installation site-specific. My images and installations are contingent on the communities and experiences they draw upon. The direct relationship between the things I create and my daily experience—what I feel and what I find—allows my process and the result to evolve how it may. By using materials that carry traces of moments past, the compositions themselves are a reminder that we all bear scars from family histories that shape our desires, prejudices, and ability to adapt (or thrive). In the end the act of creating is about making living sacred.
