Jane Stevenson (b. 1966)

The artist stated: This 3-D wall panel was inspired by a cluster of Lycian rock tombs of the Daylan River, Turkey. There you see the facades of ancient temples carved into the solid rock of a vertical cliff wall, the architectural scale of which are composed in respect to the elevations and the valley below from where the tombs become most visible. Mysterious chambers are buried beneath the surface. These monuments eternalize both the identities of individuals and their collective alignment within a greater structure. The adjacent tombs congregated over time, creating a pattern which was calculated to fit into the natural form of the stone cliff. A series of hewn portals recede outward from the central temple which reflects the architectural apex of memory and symbolism. Looking at these forms in soft focus, one might recall Joseph Alber’s Homage to the Square or any number of the universal geometric variations on the ordered passage to the spiritual world. It is a vision of a place in timelessness.

In our civilization, old drawers become small and precious reliquaries. They are our inadvertent monuments to lives lived and souls passed. These chambers are small entombments of identity and memories. Like tombs, drawers hold judiciously stored objects placed behind a decorous veil of privacy, and they outlive their creators. Coping with the death of a family member, one must make this passage through the exterior to the contents; old drawers may become a sealed mortuary, or alternatively a space of contemplation where the ethereal remains of a loved one might rise up vaporously and be reshuffled.

The grain of Black and White Ebony wood suggests a necrotic flow. In these boards are buried the strata of an underworld filled with moving ghost-like figures. Apparitions circulate in a constellation as if they escaped their graves for a midnight dance.

--Jane Stevenson