Josie Osborne -- Wonder…
I have often described myself as an optimistic pessimist, a contradiction in perspectives that allows for a simultaneous balance and tension in those two potentially conflicting views and life approaches. I have come to realize that balance and tension manifest themselves visually and physically in my art work.
The title Wonder… implies the childlike wonder of the optimist fueled by realizations about life, spiritual ponderings, natural world phenomena, beauty in all of its forms and the magic that happens in play. But there is also a sense of a different wonder-ing in a somewhat skeptical way about the more difficult aspects of our experience, the interruptions of the joyful wonder with cold reality, pain and an awareness of injustice in the world. We cannot afford to dwell too heavily in either of those two realities but must find a balance between them in order to live, love and find the more complex meaning in life. This balance exists, even in the cycles of life, longing, love, loss and play. There are both the wonderful and the wondering experiences at work together.
Working with assemblage and collage gives me an opportunity to filter my experiences, thoughts, memories, absurdity, complexity and poetry of life while joining aspects of those connections into objects. I have often described it as serious play as it lends itself to intuitive and whimsical juxtapositions, absurd transformations and all within an ordered and fairly serious space. Studio time and making art is a reflective and meditative practice for me, providing a balance to the hectic and often challenging outside world, while creating objects that, at least metaphorically, order it.
Note: This is the essay/statement from my solo exhibition Wonder... at Walkers Point Center for the Arts in Milwaukee Wisconsin. The show runs through July 9th, 2016