Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Another Look at Margaret Kilgallen

I love this little film of artist Margaret Kilgallen. (Art21)
Her Wikipedia entry says: "Kilgallen was an avid reader and thinker, looking to Appalachian music, signage, letterpress printing, freight train vandal art, and religious and decorative arts to inform her work. Her work demonstrates her respect for and engagement with craftsmanship and the stories of everyday peoples' lives. She was especially interested in "the evidence of the maker's hand."
She explained- "I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything mechanical, because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect because it's human. And I think it's the part that's interesting, that even if I'm doing really big letters and I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it straight, I'll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is." Quote from Wikipedia 
She died at 33 years of age in 2001 of breast cancer, 3 weeks after giving birth to her daughter Asha. 

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