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Three Feet High and Rising:
A Collection of Etchings by Inga Clough Falterman
September 1 – October 28, 2006
Closing reception, Friday, October 27, 5-7pm
Art Talk, Saturday, October 28, 2pm
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Artist’s Statement
How high’s the water, Mama?
Three feet high and rising.
How high’s the water, Papa?
She said it’s three feet high and rising.
My hives are gone, I lost my bees.
The chickens are sleeping in the willow trees
Cows in water up past their knees,
Three feet high and rising.
Johnny Cash
This body of work concerns, geographically, the land south of New
Orleans. However, this body of work is biographical. My subjects are mostly
voiceless, but because we easily anthropomorphize animal subjects they offer an
unequalled intensity. I present the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on me
and on the people I know and love, through the land and the animals which
inhabit it.
The timing of the exhibit holds some significance as September will be an even year since the storms. Progress allows for hope to return. The balance of hope and impatience is incredibly fragile, and life after an incredibly transforming disaster is frustrating at best. However, time allows for reflection and maturity. Emotions are predictable and understandable following a catastrophic event, but what takes place when the catastrophic event never really goes away? Katrina and Rita present new challenges of endurance and patience, testing mental stability, physical strength, and relationships.
The work presented is intaglio on copper. Etching and engraving are timeworn techniques which require skill and patience, as well as discipline in the use of materials and time. This is somewhat comically relevant to the subject at hand because the process mimics my present life. As fast as I wish my situation, whether career, house, or business related, to come to any happy conclusion, it won’t and can’t and I have to work diligently to watch any kind of progress.
I suspect more disasters are in our future. Through this body of work I hope people come to question the bigger issues regarding the hurricanes; why do they not let the Mississippi go where it wants to go, why did taxpayers say no to levee maintenance tax ten years ago, what happens to the 9th ward, where is the trash going? I would be excited if people became angry at the politics and the mess the decision makers have made of this area, but these things have little to do immediately with my images.
My images explain what the heart does, and the brain may go where it wants. What does a soul do in a land where even the river is kept between man-made banks? The helplessness in the watching of the kept river is essentially the feeling of my work. I hope to find a little peace by drawing rabbits on my copper and allowing you to see them. Perhaps by seeing them drowning you may feel guilty for being a part of the levee, for being away from the storm when she stole my bees, for knowing rabbit warrens were flooded when my roof flew away. Maybe you, too, will feel detached and absolutely unimportant, because there is nothing you can do but watch what is going to happen, happen.
Brief Biography
Last fall Inga Clough Falterman spent some time in Bloomington, Illinois. She was displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and found a temporary home at IWU’s School of Art, where she served as a guest artist demonstrating techniques in copper plate intaglio. During that time, she participated in the exhibition, Dorothy’s Red Shoes, at McLean County Arts Center. Inga and her husband moved on from Bloomington, spent a couple months on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and finally, in January 2006, were able to return to their home (now a FEMA trailer) in Braithwaite, Louisiana.
Curator Alison Hatcher and Inga corresponded regularly throughout the past year by email and cell phone, determining the feasibility of, and planning the details for, an exhibition in the fall of 2006. Upon her return to Louisiana Inga thankfully found her press intact and began creating a collection of prints that reflect her experience of the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. These prints form the exhibition, Three Feet High and Rising: A Collection of Etchings by Inga Clough Falterman, currently on view in the Arts Center’s Armstrong Gallery.
Inga Clough Falterman was born in 1973 in Richmond, Virginia. She received her Masters of Arts in Art History and Studio Art from the University of Richmond in 1994, with an emphasis in Printmaking. She worked as an environmental educator for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in remote areas of the Eastern Shore of the Delmarva Peninsula, and then took the bus to Brooklyn, New York, to study Printmaking at Pratt Institute. She had the unique privilege of making prints under the tutelage of Clare Romano and John Ross in Venice, Italy, in the summer of 1997. Until she graduated in 1998, she worked in the print shop and as a bike messenger in Manhattan. Fortunately, she was hired by the Art Institute of Colorado in Denver in 1998, and enjoyed the mountains until she met her husband, who is a charter captain in the Gulf of Mexico. Because you can’t catch tuna in the Rockies, she relocated to southeastern Louisiana. She has taught Printmaking at the University of New Orleans and Xavier University, but also works as a deckhand when she isn’t painting or working on copper. She had just purchased her first etching press the spring before Katrina hit. Although the ceiling fell in on it, it performed well in regards to the prints in this collection.
Sponsored by Brian & Anne Boyden and Specs Around Town Optical Boutique/Steve & Julie Kubsch
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