Terri Wentzka
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Conundrum #1
Conundrum #1 reflects the small, simple stories that denote the passage of time, seasonal changes so subtle we may not realize we’ve noticed them: A dry leaf captured by an abandoned spiderweb which has collapsed onto itself with age.
I enjoy working with found papers, including this page from a 1970s accounting ledger. Does such a document retain any meaning so many years later? Gifts is one of a series of drawings in which I have juxtaposed natural objects with used ledger pages and text transcribed from found grocery lists. The layering of text from different periods of time creates a new, enigmatic text and unsolvable puzzle.
A storyteller by nature, I notice tiny dramas wherever I go. In Desert Power Struggle: Out of Blueberries, a lost grocery list caught on the points of two devil’s claws (the seed pods of a desert flower) offers an irresistible mystery. Where did it come from, who lost it, and did she ever find blueberries? The passage of our lives is marked with seemingly insignificant moments like this, writing a list, using it, and finally abandoning it to the larger context of the world where it assumes a different meaning. A future archeologist might, perhaps, be even more delighted to find it than I was.
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