Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Margaret Kilgallen

Carlos and I took a day to visit the Margaret Kilgallen show in SF and then headed over to Oakland to eat crepes at Crepe A Go Go. The sauteed chicken is our taster's choice :)

It was the last day of the show and I'm so glad we made it out to see her amazing work. Margaret was tragically lost at a early age but her spirit lives on through her work.

For those who are not familiar with Margaret's work, here is a little I took from online (there's also a great documentary on PBS that shows her/Barry McGee's work):

Kilgallen was an avid reader and thinker, looking to Appalachian music, signage, letterpress printing, hobo train writing, and religious and decorative arts to inform her work. Her work demonstrates her respect for and engagement with craftsmanship and the stories of everyday peoples' lives. She was especially interested in "the evidence of the maker's hand."

As she explained:
"I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything mechanical, because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect because it's human. And I think it's the part that's off that's interesting, that even if I'm doing really big letters and I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it straight, I'll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is."











Peace,
Jennifer

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