Joetta Maue

Title

Joetta Maue

Contributor

Joetta Maue

Artist Statement

As an artist I have utilized my daily life as muse; my work inevitably reflects this. After spending years on a body of work, I felt as if I had nowhere left to go. I found myself alone in my studio, in a new city, with a young child, a changing relationship with my parents as they age and I mature, and a vastly different partner as he met a new stage in his life. I turned my eyes away from those relationships that had so long inspired me, toward the objects that surrounded me. The objects were real, solid, reliable, and less malleable, less fleeting, tangible markers of this moment in time. The pile of trucks my son left on the floor was less ephemeral then the fact that he was changing at an “unfathomable speed.” The dirty blanket on the couch was reliably there while my partner was often on his own journey. The beauty of the sunlight on the plants, that I never seemed to have time to water, made me remember why I had plants in the first place. The objects became what located me in this state of transition.
I began looking at the objects I could pick up, touch and feel for grounding and using them as my subject. I began to explore the psychological landscape of the domestic space through various media. Zooming in, slowing down, creating labor in the small seemingly insignificant moments is an attempt to bring awareness and attention to the glimpses, touches, and objects that create our daily experience. Through my labor intensive drawing and the witness of my camera I invite the viewer to slow down, look around and notice their own landscape… a landscape of their domestic world, their emotional state, and their mind.
My graphite drawings allow me to focus on the importance of these small objects or moments, amplifying their texture, tones and detail, abstracting their meaning and role while simultaneously elevating them. Through this work I am able to replicate my beloved process of the darkroom via my technique of drawing with projection & enlargement, mirroring the process of silver halide printing and the use of a grain focuser, the tool which brings a negative to clarity, and using technique to develop the tonal variations important to the image. The photographs capture the document of this moment in time, in the home, my life and my psychological experience. The photographs with their rich saturated colors make the subject vibrant and seductive while the drawings remain in black and white concentrating on the quiet completive experience being investigated via the work
The images vary from small to large scale and play with ideas of hierarchy through this variation in size and the installation. The work varies from being formally framed and hung while others would remain in a place of process, i.e. hung low/ high on the wall, with and without frame, leaning on the floor, in suspension. This formal exploration is meant to allude to the hierarchies that exist in our mind about our domestic space and both its value and importance as well as its dismissal and ignorance of.

My intention is to create a conceptual presentation of an intimate subject. My goal is for the mediums to work together as one in formal groupings and visual relationships. Bringing living, breathing things together with the objects that surround me all of which I touch and care for to feel more alive and present in this moment.

Collection

Citation

joettamaue, “Joetta Maue,” Artist Parent Index , accessed March 29, 2024, https://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/243.

Output Formats

Item Relations

This item has no relations.

Geolocation