ARTIST’S STATEMENT - By Annemarie Zwack

My initial attraction to the skeleton was a Pompeiin mosaic in which a skeleton held two pitchers.  Looking at the skeleton closely, I noticed that the torso was made of an amphora (vase) shape.  It made me think about the constant relationship between life and death that exists in a skeleton.  Every living person is walking around with a skeleton inside.  It is the structure that supports our life.  It also represents another universal fact of life: death. 

As I began to explore the imagery of skeletons I naturally turned towards self-portraits and personal narrative.  The pieces I was making became x-ray snap shots of me at turning points in my life.  I merged different incidents into icons that relate a narrative.

Two of the skeletons are made from body prints.  The body prints show the ghost or after image of what the skeleton once was; fleshy, and contrast that fleshy, sensual, body print, similar to the un-stretched fabric and quilted softness of the medium, with the structural order; the architecture, of the skeleton and the weave.

In the Venice and Florence pieces, I enjoyed interpreting famous architecture.  The buildings portrayed (San Marcos Basilica and the Florence Cathedral) are so permanent in their stone and masonry, and such a part of western collective history and aesthetic.  I had fun imagining ‘What if they were made out of something as soft and relatively temporary as fabric?’  I enjoyed interpreting the marble surface design of the Duomo in textile surface design .  I also was attentive to the physical likenesses of the buildings to people, creating voluptuous domes and windows that look like eyes.

Most of the skeletons exist in worlds where they seem vulnerable in their bare bones and yet they are unaware of this and are often smiling from ear to ear. Each one feels invested with life.  In ‘Artist’s First Trip to Venice’ I used the birds bursting into flight to express the soaring feeling in the heart of the artist at being in Venice.  ‘Birthday Girl’ celebrates life with a cake.