artwork

catalog covers

In this autobiographical series shown at Frumkin/Duval Gallery in Santa Monica, California, in 2003, Stender takes as her starting point works of modern and contemporary art, both visual and literary, including iconic Pop images by Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana, and Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, all works that were significant to her development. Using the covers of contemporary art auction catalogues as a basis for mixed media collages, the artist layers, sews and interweaves text, photographs and objects of personal and cultural significance to create a visual stream-of-consciousness journal. Stender has been interested in the concept of "deconstruction" and in previous bodies of work created a unique way to incorporate traditions and techniques of women's handicrafts in the service of contemporary art practice.

All the techniques and materials come together here in ways that examine externally imposed expectations, self-determination and self-reinvention, the commodification of art, the symbolism and significance of money in our lives, and disillusionment and loss of innocence. The structural forms employed include densely worked surfaces, allover patterning and the grid, with its history of both minimalism and craft. Building on referents that precede and envelope her childhood, (Stender was named after a Proust character), she creates an intensely personal web of responses to our history, both personal and collective.