The Garden
& Other Books
Please have a seat in the gallery’s reading corner and peruse beloved illustrated books by Mary Sherwood Wright Jones and other books about the art in the exhibition. Alongside these is Anne Sherwood Pundyk’s new artist’s book, The Garden. Modeled on her grandmother’s love of fairy tales, the artist’s book presents a series of emotionally evocative abstract images with eleven semi-autobiographical singe-page stories centering on themes of abandonment and loss. Pundyk’s tales hint of secrets and truths, as they trace familial ties, tragedy, art, nature and a cathartic sense of sharing.
The Garden’s visible binding, with exposed, long, colored threads, highlights the physical joining of the artist’s book’s form, but also acts as a metaphor for the interwoven themes and motifs linking the images and written word. In particular, the idea of threads connecting family members bonded by genetics and experiences — at once tenuous and strong - capable of being broken and reestablished.