Kerianne Quick
“My objects reflect the human urge to collect, mark occasions with tangible objects, and how objects connect us to the past and our own memories.”
Artist Statement
When I was a child, my father referred to our immediate family’s cultural background as ‘Heinz 57’, a common American colloquialism meaning a mixture of cultures. With living grandparents who had immigrated from Cuba and great-grandparents from the Netherlands and British Isles, this idea fascinated my eight-year-old self. This realization of places and cultures at a distance made the world a bigger place – and was the first step toward gaining an understanding about the composition of my own unique cultural framework, and that of others. My multicultural upbringing in Southern California developed in me an interest in and sensitivity toward the range of subtle similarities and differences that can exist between peoples and places. This transformed into a voracious appetite for peoples’ hidden histories, interest in the traditions of tourism, and fascination with the relationship between objects and memories. These interests fuel work whose fundamental objective is one of deep understanding of a people and place.
My work becomes a strange commemoration of a time and place, a kind of reverse souvenir made by the visitor instead of the visited. My material-centric and material specific approach is intended to inspire the viewer to consider a complex network of historical, economic, and geopolitical forces that bring an object into existence. The keepsake, souvenir, and heirloom are forms fertile for exploring story, place, and material. My research is rooted in exploring craft and materiality as cultural phenomena with an emphasis on the body and personal adornment.
