Andrea Keys Connell: ...Gently Down the Stream...

Reed Smith Gallery
Opening Reception, First Friday, Mar 2, 5-9pm

Keys Connell was one of two artists selected from a nationalcall for entries for a solo exhibition during The Studio’s 2011-2012 Exhibitionseason. A figurative sculptor she receivedher BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD and her MFAfrom Ohio University, Athens, OH. She is currently the Assistant Professor ofCeramics at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Craft/MaterialStudies. Keys-Connell has quickly became known for her installations of large-scalestylized figures influenced by Hummel Figurines, the tabletop sculpturesdepicting stout and childlike figures as idealized beings in an idyllicpastoral land. Produced in Germanfactories starting in the mid 1930’s, they came to prominence in America afterWWII when GI’s brought them home en masse. 

Keys Connell’s use of the Hummel figure might suggest that thesubject matter of her work is light. One would be wrong to make that assumption though Keys Connell plays onthat knowledge using these cherubic figures to explore dark subject matter; howpast traumas might affect development, how an individual’s personal historyaffects their identity, behaviors and actions. Keys Connell is particularly interested in inter-generationaltrauma, how a trauma suffered by a parent affects their son/daughter.

Keys writes, “…Gently Down The Stream…” began with a simpleobservation: newspaper photos depicting individuals - whether confronted withnatural disaster, war, or engaged in protest - often shared a similarexpressiveness, body language, and composition. These images of people withanguished faces and strained bodies, recurring again and again, become, intheir repetition, timeless and interchangeable. But the insistent beat of timemoves the individual past the captured image. And what seems interchangeable isoften a truly singular and defining event for the person in question. Inattempting to return to the memory of that moment they become captive to it.”

“This collection of sculptures is a reflection of a personthat refuses to leave the picture frame, the part of a person who has beenaltered due to an event that we have seen an edited glimpse of, the part of a personwho lingers in the memory of that instant long after it has passed. I imaginethis space as a non-space, a space where memories are revisited over and overagain. The figures in this installation reside in thisnon-space and bear repeated witness to the memory of an event now beyond theircontrol. Their body language suggests something visible only to them andremains hidden from the viewer. “

“Heraclitus famously compared time to a river, stating, “Youcannot step in the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing.” We maytry to live in the same river but the waters refuse to be still. If we refuseto follow the natural currents we move ourselves outside of time. The moment weseek is gone. Yet we still remove ourselves from the present tense of ourlives. The more one lives, the more memory beckons. By ignoring its call we arereminded of how difficult it is to go, in the words of the nursery rhyme, “gently down the stream.””