Paige Pedri Statement

The choices we make create the experiences that define our lives. Sometimes, on our path, we are led to a ledge where our known reality comes into question and we are offered views of new possibilities. Do you pull back and retreat into what is safe? Do you take a leap of faith and jump off the edge to the other side? Or, do you teeter between the two, balancing between the comfort of the past with aliveness of the future?

I find myself often on the proverbial ledge, faced with making decisions that will take me somewhere new. My work is a direct response to these experiences, emotions and memories. To articulate my internal dialog, I abstract elements from common objects, the human form and even ideas and translate them into new forms that represent new realities – for me and for the viewer.

I often use materials I have never worked with, or use them in a new way. In my process I am very physically engaged with the materials – whether the works are monumental or diminutive – consequently the materials help guide the work. Sometimes I have to be bold and straightforward with my executions. Other times I must be gentle and patient. I can’t always predict the outcomes, and usually the results surprise and frustrate me.

My work, like my life, is always shifting and offering me new options. So I am interested in representing this basic human predicament through the ways my forms connect and relate to each other, the tension they create and how the forms change and move as you walk around them. What questions does the work evoke for the viewer? What memories are brought to life? What emotions are triggered?

Life is always changing, people are always changing. What we know to be true today, may not be so tomorrow.

Paige Pedri, February 2010