like bookends for slide drawers
© Sarah Nesbitt, 2012

a small feather, full of magic

— the endless fragility

and potency of nature

a small bag for you, my friend

to put all your secrets and passions in

a clip

to seal it

if you wish,

or not

if you want to let me in

Even when

everything is

black

light finds a way

to reflect

in the texture,

off the surface,

its always there

always waiting,

always patient

for you

Painting © Pierre Soulages, poem  © Sarah Nesbitt, 2011
see also: http://missnesbitt.com/2012/01/17/starry-starry-night/

Photo: © Francesca Tallone

when i am young, i am bold, i want to express my body boldly
i put it in danger, i push it to the limits
i drink
i smoke
always in excess
i don’t sleep much
i find strange places to climb, jump & run

when i am old..
i stay at home more
i look at pictures of young bodies & can’t remember the way it feels
i feel left out
sometimes resentful
try to be above it all

when I am a little bit older
i don’t feel so threatened,
i begin to let it go more
i don’t worry so much
i have other things to be bold about

when i am ‘really old’
i think i will just smile

or at least i hope.

Photo: © Francesca Tallone
she will have work up in Montreal @ Citizen Vintage, Vernissage this Friday January 13, 2012…. check out her work: http://www.patternclash.com/

Vernissage: Tuesday, November 1. 6:00 – 8:00 pm, room LB-340.

Exhibition duration: October 15- November 16

broken cherished objects = teenage angst = sinister banality

After Party presents three installations that stem from artist book projects by Kerri Flannigan, Sarah Nesbitt and Jenny Lin. Set within wooden display cases viewed from above, each installation forms a microcosmic examination of fragments, scrutinized and reassembled into narratives that are personal, collective and cumulatively revealing.

Flannigan’s Coming of Age Stories is a collection of individual anecdotes of adolescent sexual and gender-identity-forming epiphanies. With humour and candour, these charged stories capture the shared experiences of angst-ridden bashfulness but also satisfaction and empowerment.

Nesbitt’s Broken Things considers the narratives and cherished associations embedded in otherwise meaningless physical objects. The act of recording and preserving fragments in Broken Things marks a transition where personal possessions move from functional/mundane to treasure/trophy. The bookwork processes this transition through personal mementos written to/about the dead. The ‘postcards’ eulogize the remains, personifying their deeper and perhaps bizarre relationship to their owners.

Lin’s Back Yard Grass rakes through the greenery of a suburban domicile exposing a gathering’s day-after left-behinds in whodunit fashion. In sequential book format, this set of pop-up images triggers an increasing sense of foreboding and absurdity with each turn of the page.

The three installations skitter between climax and anti-climax while also suggesting that the stories are to be continued. A new party begins amidst the debris of the tail end of another.