Barely a Trace
Barely a Trace no. 1–20
Sketches and colored papers
1992–2023
A series of drawings that combine sketches and colored papers created from 1992-2023. Each collage represents an entire artistic process, fluidly moving between one location and another, one media and another. Patterson documents the space via measurement and distance on site and remembers color and light through stroke and motion. By combining these visual recordings together into a new collage, Patterson creates a situation for the viewer that mirrors how our brains remember. Each experience and visual memory leads to a new non-linear experience. Some sketches are of Southern Maryland while others are of Italy, mimicking how our brains make connections between disparate locations and events that span decades. Dementia has affected her family, and she has personal experience watching a loved one try to make sense of seemingly unrelated events. Sometimes the memories from long ago combine with the experiences we are currently having in a beautiful way.
“I am happy to have my father with me now. The way he remembers things from the past as if they are happening now is like the way I create in the studio, and this a beautiful experience if you don’t try to recreate the initial memory. You can see why I am not sure I want to include that, but it is about enjoying the here and now. As a young mom, I could be sad about not being able to travel like I used to, or I can let my past inform my experiences now to create new work and new memories. As an academic, I could have been sad that my career took me to a rural area rather than a city or I could find meaning in the place where I landed. The only other thing I would say is that in relation to the work itself, there are some drawings that are incredibly clear and some that are quite faded. And there is newer work that is barely a fragment of an experience, and it is literally in the work itself, these separate events are held together loosely with tape, a material that is used to temporarily attach something. Tape is not something you use to combine things forever and ever, usually. And this current version of these memories will not remain forever either. Our experiences are temporal and when noticed, quite powerful.”
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