Marvin Liberman

My sculptural work has focused on how trauma changes those who have lived through it, and what 'marks' it leaves upon us. This series, called Traces (or Huellas in Spanish) uses simple materials: gauze fabric, tree branches and muted color. They're intended to offer a sense of intimacy, even though the work is at times disquieting. My drawings take another path, trying to uncover meaning through a process of wandering in a somewhat subconscious space. 

The long and unpredictable period of confinement, fear, and having to live with an incapacity to see what the future might, or might not, hold for all of us, is something many of us may have confronted. It was as if one lived in an unending, threatening fog. And so, there was no possibility to draw anything specific, grounded or precise.

The drawings I turned to could only look inward, to what for me is an internal river within all of us. Was it possible to record anything of this subconscious, fluid movement? And what meaning might come forth from it? As these works evolved, they insisted on a lack of clarity, a melding of forms, shadows and disappearance into undefinable vagueness. Form fading into atmosphere, though very much present.

That these drawings use only soft graphite and erasers has let me deepen my love of the subtleties that such basic tools allow. That these are internal and wander in a darkened space is simply the nature of the hand that drew them.