Melissa Stern

exhibition

life during wartime

september 16 - october 29, 2011

artist statement: images of the 1940s have long played an important role in my artwork. my father was a world war two veteran, along with most of the other fathers i knew, and the era infused my life as a child in the 1960s. my friends and i acted out expansive "combat" battles on our philadelphia street; i wanted to be an army nurse when i grew up.

for many years i have collected and worked with images from life magazines of the 1940s. i have been fascinated by the words portrayed from advertisements urging support of the war effort, to articles, drawings, recipes, and photos expressive of ideals of family, motherhood, neighborhood, and success, both the optimism and the anxiety seem light years away and yet strangely familiar to 2011. recently i have begun to use these images in collages about family, nation, relationships and childhood including "life during wartime."

my hope is that each viewer will interpret these drawings in their own way. they are not meant to be read as "bandaged" in a literal sense. there is a relationship in each that can be read as tender, bold, afraid and yes, even damaged, but nothing is quite what it may seem at first glance.

each work is a fragment of a story rather than its full text. i never "write'“ the endings; each viewer finishes the script, bringing his or her own history, memories and feelings to complete the piece.