Artist Dawn Cerny works across the disciplines including drawing, photography, publication and time-based media.
She received her MFA in Sculpture at the Milton Avery School of Art at Bard College.
She lives and works in Seattle. — dawncerny.com
Courtesy of the artist.
I have two aesthetic memories but I cannot remember which came first as my body was in the crib for both observations. The yellow gingham wallpaper and bars of my crib--- and they both did things to elicit the sensation of possibility when I was supposed to be resting.
The gingham wallpaper in my nursery was a very tiny pattern—the squares so tiny and forever shifting I thought they were moving. Was the yellow getting darker or lighter from square to square within a basket like "over and under" pattern? I would try to track each square – trying to understand if the yellow was getting darker or lighter as the hue shifted in all directions. Light yellow to white to yellow and on and on-- a never-ending story that kept slipping away from me.
Unlike the visual representation of tracking the movement of a color value over a grid—the bars of my crib was an obstruction rhythmically blocking and opening my sightline. Through the bars of the crib, I found I could shift the focus of my eye to shape the sensation of inside and outside. When focusing my eye on the bars of the crib the outside world would blur and suddenly I was in an interior space. When focusing my eye on the area outside the bars--- the larger room into sharp focus and the bars would disappear. The positive and the negative space could be manipulated--- and my eye could liberate me from my physical circumstances in the blink of an eye. My eye could transport me from a sensation of being in a landscape to being within a shelter without moving my body. I am safe inside or am I trapped? I am vulnerable outside or am I free? A yellow is moving to white and then back to yellow.
Dawn Cerny