From One to Many
My artworks come with stories. Here is an artwork from 2012 and how it was transformed in 2018.
It is fun telling the story of this artwork. It was first shown at my solo show, Let’s Tell Our Tales! - Everyday Stories
as Artist’s Books
and Collages
by Sushmita Mazumdar, at the Popcorn Gallery, Glen Echo Park, Maryland. The year was 2012. Later it was shown in two other exhibits in Virginia and Maryland. The story of this artwork however, started on the Metro some years ago, as I took the Blue Line to the Freer and Sackler Gallery of Art, as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art was called back then. My commute to docent training on Wednesdays usually included reading or sketching. This time, sketching quickly turned to writing as what the cool Wall Street-type guy in the pinstriped suit was saying on his cellphone caught my attention.
Photo, left: Derailment on the Blue Line, by Sushmita Mazumdar.
Mixed media on canvas. 2012.
One day in 2018, as I wondered what art I was going to submit to the Studio Pause group show Baked Clay/Endless Sky: Five Years of PAUSE, I looked at some old artworks. When I told PAUSEr Kara (I call regulars to my studio, Studio Pause, PAUSErs) I was going to rework a canvas from 2012 she refused to let me.
“Why?” I asked.
“No! This is a great piece. You can’t destroy it,” she said.
“I’m not destroying it. I’m making it better!”
“No,” she said, pulling it away from me.
“It’s already torn, Kara. Look.” I showed her how the accordion book I had sewed into the canvas had gotten “derailed” over the years.
“I’ll keep it safe somewhere. In my basement.”
“You don't have a basement,” I reminded her. We both laughed.
After she left I pulled out the book I had sewn into the canvas. It told the story of a man I sat across from on the Blue Line train many years ago. It was an artwork that told the story of one man affected by the housing crisis of 2008 and I called it Derailment on the Blue Line. As you read the story you realize that the Wall Street dude who I sat across from had suffered in the crash too. As I wrote the words he spoke into his cell phone into my sketchbook, I could tell something was off—a lot was off. When he got up to get off I saw that he didn't have a cell phone at all and he kept talking “on the phone” to imaginary people as he left. His suit was impeccable but his shoes told another story. He carried 2 paper Bloomingdales bags…
I painted over the metro map collage and tore up the torn book into many tiny books. I filled them with colorful handmade paper scraps, and sewed them into the canvas. It reminded me of all the people I have met and all the stories—real-life stories—they have entrusted me with. What am I supposed to do with them, I wonder often. So I share them hoping that the more stories we listen to the more we will know about our world. I also added on words written in the Devanagari script, lyrics of Hindi songs that told stories nobody could read, just me. It connected the people to my story, and me to all of theirs.
“Our Words are our Horizon,” Rana, another PAUSEr, titled it when I shared a close-up of the artwork with her on Messenger. “We are all Storybooks,” I posted online. [On Instagram]
And that is the story of this collaboration. [See a video of the artwork here]
From One to Many: Collaboration with Myself from 5 Years Ago
by Sushmita Mazumdar, Mixed media on canvas, 2015. Created for the 2015 show, Baked Clay/EndlessSky: Celebrating 5 Years of PAUSE, Center Gallery, Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Arlington, VA.