A sequence of work devoted to the rituals of girlhood by Philadelphia-based artist Mary Henderson. Henderson acquired her BA in positive arts from Amherst Faculty and MFA in portray from the College of Pennsylvania. Having come of age at a time when ladies’ pursuits had been largely denigrated, Henderson observes the latest reframing across the cultural salience of girlhood. For Henderson the shift feels each momentous and fragile. Nonetheless, her work totally embrace the particularities of an period made up of sleepovers, ballet-carpool rides, friendship bracelets, and choreographed dance routines.
On this method, the sequence can also be about motherhood and the sense of “time journey” Henderson herself experiences within the presence of her adolescent collaborators (her daughter and daughter’s associates). “I observe them within the rear-view mirror or from the bleachers,” Henderson describes “my private sensory recollections of braces, cut up ends and peeling nail polish are at all times current.” Sourcing her imagery from an archive of non-public iPhone snapshots, Henderson is within the capability of representational portray to attract consideration to what could have initially been informal or peripheral visible data:
“As a result of my compositions are likely to heart on the ephemeral, the intimate and the fragmentary, I usually work from low-resolution corners of bigger reference photographs. The ensuing portray course of is very interpolative, and includes supplementing my supply materials with in depth visible analysis in addition to direct statement. The highly-saturated and largely invented palette shifts the photographs away from a sense of speedy notion and in direction of a extra inside house knowledgeable by temper and reminiscence.”
