Sue Palmer Stone

Embodiment — Salvaging a Self | This series represents a salvage operation: I retrieve something of value out of detritus and man-made cast-offs that would otherwise be lost or abandoned. It’s an effort to generate coherence and harmony in a dissonant, fragile, and precarious world.

Hunting for things to capture in neglected or beat-up spaces (a scrap metal yard, alleyway, construction site, behind a strip mall or pizzeria), I often haul items to new sites, or back to my studio, to work with them sculpturally and again photographically. Sometimes photographing them where I find them is enough, sometimes I have a slight hand in modeling or adjusting. These are “readymades” with occasional interventions.

The sculptures I create in my studio communicate obliquely and directly with what draws my attention in the outside world. They are vulnerable and alone, standing up tall, already collapsed, or somewhere in between.  

I delight in making and connecting images that speak to each other through shape, color, line, texture, gesture, attitude and atmosphere, often playing with scale to emphasize or distort these relationships. While the objects themselves may carry a sense of loss, loneliness and abandonment, to me, these connections feel playful. www.suepalmerstone.com