Darlene
Kaczmarczyk
PHOTOGRAPHY
Works on Paper:
The Kitchen Coda (2003) series are grids of appropriated imagery manipulated by the Polaroid image transfer process. I used this process to allow each coda to integrate images from a variety of sources: TV, magazine ads, stock photography, and old family albums.
The Tender Sentiments (2006) series uses monogrammed handkerchiefs – anachronisms of a more genteel time, but used to spell out a rude phrase (Odalisque), to remind us of the major periods in a traditional woman’s life (Seven Ages…) or old-fashioned names (The Last Girls).
The handkerchiefs are used to create photograms - a process that bypasses the camera and records an image of a transparent or translucent item directly on photographic paper. Like socks that hold the shape of the wearer’s foot, clothes contain memory, just as the photogram is a memory of the object laid upon the light sensitive paper. This simple process echoes my concern with memory and nostalgia. My art making is fueled by the discrepancy between these two – how memory and nostalgia are comprised of both fact and imagination. I often use vintage items from the 1950’s for the nostalgia they elicit in the Baby Boomer generation – and the discussion of their messages I hope they engender.
The Scrolls (2003) series are inkjet prints on vintage wallpaper depicting a continuous parade of domestic activities. The imagery is appropriated from advertising in 1950’s women’s magazines that were chock full of ads for the newest refrigerators and stoves, washers and dryers; all newly improved and readily available in the post-war economic boom. After a long period of little appliance production during the Depression and none at all during World War II, kitchen appliances were produced and sold in record numbers in the 50’s – over four hundred million dollars in sales in 1955 alone. Yet even these sales figures can’t account for the ecstatic bliss of the models proffering the latest appliances. I chose the scroll format to emphasize that the washing, drying, ironing, and cleaning activities have no beginning and no end. They are, still, never done.
