yes no no no maybe, Artists Choose Parrish, Part II
August 20, 2023 - February 4, 2024
Parrish Art Museum, 279 Montauk Hwy, Water Mill, New York
Artists Choose Parrish (Part II) / Suzanne McClelland
Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, N.Y., August 20,2023-February 4, 2024
Suzanne McClelland
“If you think of us next time, remember our silence is a silence of love and not of indifference. Remember, we are writing in the sky instead of on paper—that’s our song. Lift your eyes and look up in the sky. There’s our message. Lift your eyes again and look around you, and you will see that you are walking in the sky which extends to the ground. We are all part of the sky, more so than of the ground. Remember, we love you.”
John Lennon & Yoko Ono May 27th, 1979 Yoko Ono’s 1992 unbound book, Color, Fly, Sky, is displayed in the vitrine at the center of this room. Her description of a powerful childhood experience struck me as a moment when an artist might develop her imagination as a refuge, literally a place to visit in the mind. Many of the drawings in this selection reflect my attraction to line as inscription. Some suggest an aperture, portal, or pathway between here and there. I chose works that reflect my love for writing as drawing, drawing as writing, and the many ways that “edge” implies boundaries between forms in a painting… and between bodies of water and land. The horizon line acts as an anchor. Since working on the East End of Long Island, I’ve become keenly aware of this division and its stability. The horizon dissolves with the shifting light, fog, or darkness and this movement in our skies and waters is at the core of my relationship to landscape. Examining the Parrish Art Museum collection deepened my curiosity about how institutions reflect our cultural priorities as well as the erasures. This invitation allowed me to position familiar artists with those less recognized. Collections like this one are a meaningful historical record and need to be shared with the public as often as possible.