The Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana is pleased to announce Amanda Sibrel as the featured artist In the Window. My House was Built with Wood from your Family Tree is the title of Sibrel’s exhibit. The opening reception will be Saturday, November 9th from1:00pm to 3:00pm at the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana. The exhibit will be on display until November 29th.
My House was Built with Wood from your Family Tree
Artist Statement, 2013
I grew up in a house on the 700 block of Chandler Ave in Evansville, IN. It was a very old house with high ceilings and hardwood floors, crown-molding and leaded windows, French doors and peeling wallpaper. The house had been updated with bits and pieces of each of its owners. Wallpaper layered atop wallpaper. I found Africa and Bette Crocker and Groucho Marx hiding in the walls where the paper had peeled. It aged a lot during the 18 years that I lived there; we grew older together. And when the last of the eight layers of roof began to leak, I took comfort in the stories I would share about my aged friend that I’d matured with. When I moved out to go to college in Kansas City, I took few pictures because I knew I’d remember every detail forever.
I did lots of drawings of the rooms in my house throughout college. In them, I imagined who might have lived there through each decade of its existence and how they might have looked standing in my bedroom, my bathroom and the foyer. I also documented and analyzed every big old, drafty house I lived in after.
My art has been about many things in the 13 years since I left my house behind, and the 7 years since the city tore it down, but no matter the theme I intend to follow, my history with that Victorian Lady has solidified my aesthetic. I still romanticize the history of each house and the people who lived and loved in it and covered the walls with their own stories as they built additions onto their family tree.
