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A story about Maria Munroe appeared on
NBC news Channel 4 in Los Angeles on September 1, 2006.
To view the broadcast Ashes To Art, please click on the
picture above or click here to read the transcript.
An article
on Maria Munroe's ETURNS, as they appeared in her gallery
show at Frank Pictures Gallery. (May 14 through June
14, 2006) From the August 3, 2006 Los
Angeles Times Home Section.
"I
WAS ONCE AS YOU ARE,
NOW I AM AS YOU SHALL BE"
is
a creative, spiritual and intellectual exploration
of the challenging,
and
in this case celebratory,
subject of death. Munroe’s medium is the funerary
ash, and in her hands it becomes a wonderful, dynamic
substance, transcendent and pure. The show consists of
25 sculptures,
Munroe calls them Eturns. They are fabricated from a
variety of media: sterling silver, ceramic, wooden marquetry,
spun
copper and blown glass and in conceived under her direction
through a collaboration with a variety of master craftsmen.
Each is occupied by a once living person, who either
commissioned their piece themselves and was actively
engaged in its
conception and realization, or a commission was made
specifically for them. “Because the topic is so
immense and profound, to have something concrete in front
of you helps us to
focus on that conversation”, says Munroe, “obviously
it’s a very personal investigation.” These
sculptural objects command an appreciation as works of
art. Love is the core action of the work, but they also
fulfill the criteria of all timeless works of art. There
are three essential components here under investigation:
form, content and meaning. These are really timepieces,
encapsulating whole life spans, functioning simultaneously
in the past, the present and the future. They pose every
relevant question as to the nature of art itself and
to that of life itself and of what becomes of us afterwards.
None of the pieces shown are available for sale. The
prices
shown are only an indication of the cost of fabricating
a similar piece to be commissioned and custom made to
the specifications of each individual collector to be
created
according to the imagination of the patron in conjunction
with the artist. The exact price will vary with the substitution
of various elements: i.e. size, shape, the gauge of the
silver chosen, the choice of rosewood for ebony, copper
for bronze. It is a great privilege to present this show.
We offer it to you with the utmost reverence and respect
for the silent guests who are sharing their vision with
you today.
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Maria Munroe’s house in Venice is busy with wonder.
There were objects, sculptures everywhere, really unique
pieces unlike anything I had seen before: long diamond
shapes made of sterling silver, puzzle boxes in ebony,
bowls of spun copper filled with a kind of coarse nacreous
sand. And tables and tables of glass globes that seemed
shot with stars. I was mesmerized. But I was unprepared
for that revelation that followed, for in each of these
sculptures lived a person. Maria sculpted funerary
urns, each contained actual human remains. I had that
day one of the supremely moving and emotional afternoons
of my life. I knew immediately that I wanted to exhibit
Maria’s work at the gallery. We will all know
death. In my lifetime I have lost a mother and a father,
my beloved dog, Mega, and many, far too many, friends.
In the years to come there will be more loss and ultimately
I too will be lost. Maria has given me a means of engaging
the transition, in a way that I find defiant, beautiful
and exciting. I hope the essential challenges her work
poses are the same for all the art I show, that all
great art inspires a dialogue between the mind and
the spirit, between what is temporal and what is eternal,
of what flirts with our idea of ourselves and what
embraces it, a dare to make what we think we don’t
know into what we intrinsically know. This is our Egypt,
our here now, and our forever and ever. The pieces
speak so eloquently of those they embody.
Laurie
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| Munroe’s
crystal Eturns involve a process of Vitrification, wherein
funerary ash (cremains) is incorporated into the making of
lead crystal objects. Some are hand held, some meant to be
worn, others are globe or cube shaped. All are transparent,
even the clear parts is the person. They are receptacles for
the ash and made of the ash, through the transparency of the
glass the ashes are visible. Their texture is like the coarse
sand and ground shells one finds at the seashore, irregular
in consistency and having a nacreous quality. Inside the orbs
they sprawl like universes. Within
the plume of ash, not only does the ash retain its form as
ash, but it also vaporizes in the process of making the glass
and tiny air bubbles form. Gas is trapped inside the bubbles
and that gas, made up of essentially a person, is in perpetual
motion giving you two forms of the same thing existing at the
same
time. The piece is totally activatedon every conceivable level
ofconversation, formally, contextually and in its meaning.” |
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