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ARTIST STATEMENT

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My work is an investigation of the threads of cultural memory which I feel both from my own visual experiences, and through that mysterious transmission of sensibility which comes from some place beyond the individual. I am interested in how cultural traditions collide and merge, and how this is embedded in all of us.

New technology has expanded my visual vocabulary, and all of my work, both video and still imagery, is now produced through the computer. These images grow from the affinity between my life as a contemporary American, and what I regard as my heritage, extending to times, places, and philosophies far from my own experience. Although much of my work focuses on Eastern European Jewish culture, many other cultural legacies have touched my work as well.

Echoing the ambiguity of memory, the computer is the instrument for allowing some images to sing, some to come forward as clear images, others to fall back into barely representational dreams of textures and colors. The inter-weaving of image fragments within the computer renders the texture of the memories, and creates a narrative out of final composition, even when it is rendered as a fixed two-dimensional print.

As a younger artist, I believed in the power of formal visual language to communicate. Under the influence of American Abstract Expressionism, I wanted to believe that the play of color against texture could reveal thoughts and feelings. It was the search for a formal structure to contain my expressionist gestures that led me to investigate Hebrew manuscripts as a structural model, after years of looking to Persian manuscripts and other less common sources.

The illusion that Hebrew manuscripts would be just another influencing model vaporized the first time that I actually held a 500 year old manuscript in my hands. When I first traveled through Europe looking at these works from my own tradition, I experienced an emotional connection that was completely unanticipated. Others may feel this when they view Renaissance art, but for me the sensation that art and creative works can link us to the lives and thoughts of those that went before us was completely new and overwhelming. Since then, my work has come to focus on communicating this sense of connection with the past and the present.

My introduction to digital media came early, before the age of easy and effective scanning, but as soon as scanning was readily available I incorporated it into my imagery. Because of the strong use of architectural motifs in many Hebrew manuscripts, this led me naturally to move my imagery into references to specific places. As I traveled to photograph sites for my work, seeking places that spoke to timeless links through generations, I found myself increasingly in tune with the echoes of the past. This is the spiritual side of my work, and the search to go beyond my own moment in time has become the driving force in my work.


Cynthia Beth Rubin