As much as color, these pieces are also about memory. It's often been observed that the boxes of Joseph Cornell act as reliquaries, sanctifiying, through encapsulation, the lost whole implied by a set of fragments. But she doesn’t buy that. Her pieces are trying to work through the exuberant way memory feeds into life.
Likewise, miniaturization isn’t the same thing as fragmentation. The rooms in this series are fully furnished, incorporating and recontextualizing elements from her own life. The boxes are of shallow depth and brightly lit so as to avoid dark corners. There is no desire to keep secrets here, no desire to suggest that anything is incomplete or has been lost.
She remains a moody kid. Her piano-playing was always characterized by a dark or tragic undertone, and, if her poetry has often been more optimistic, its production has never felt as ecstatic. The box poems take her by surprise, being both fruitful and optimistic. Creating color and space, expressing memory’s presence rather than its passing, are often their own reward.
