RELIC SERIES

Is this project creepy or beautiful?
Is this an installation or a poem?
Is this a landscape or a theatre piece?

The relic series project is an effort to reconcile the experiences of the past five years of my personal life.
I started this series first by painting and resembling the children’s blocks.
Then I moved to saving a larger remains of frames and easels.
The outcome of this process was necessary for me in order to find out a new ways of reorganizing the importance of lost, used and unwanted objects, like; meat bones, candle sticks, broken dishes and other elements from daily and festival usage.

The beauty and sacred elements of these objects EVENTUALLY led me towards a new alchemy, which is aside of my painting on canvas, but relates particulary to the bones as a intimate symbol and an art form.

The final stage of this process was manifested by saving all the bones from my family meals and from the leftovers of my friends over a long period of time, including a special Saturday night at Metropolitan Museum.
It was to me a creepy and intimate ritual.

I cleaned the bones and treated them with peroxide, bleach and applied some egg tempera to preserve their vitality. I also often relocate them from place to place during this period as my life was in flux geographically and emotionally.

Soon , the bones which I named ‘relics’, started to evoke every single memory of loss and joy; of every day and the eternal of these past five years.

Since the inception and conclusion of the relics series several dramatic and personal events occurred after and before WTC 9/11/01 disaster as;

- My beloved daughter Allison Jane Banker died from Hodgkins disease
on 10/18/02

- My dear friend and art dealer Monique Leb Goldstrom who first recognized the value of these series, died after a long and courageous battle with cancer on 02/12/04.

My artwork expresses; the tradition, process, past, present, cultures, ceremonies, life, death and cycles of the individual and the family.



Verses of reflection:

"In Naples people paint still lifes and landscapes of unburied and resurrected…"

" Unaswered or answered Prayer" – 2 Samuel: 21

" Jesus said :
To make things right with our brothers before we brought our gifts to the altar,
reconciliation of relationships take priority over consumption of material gifts."


Amy Cohen Banker