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For Clyde and Anna Lee
 
2017


"Hillary Wagner’s work ["For Clyde and Anna Lee"] explores the complexities of memory through images and materials recovered from her grandparents’ now-abandoned dairy farm in southwestern Ohio. In the exhibition, Wagner has produced an installation that effectively recreates an image from her childhood in the physical form of a steel tank used for keeping milk fresh before pasteurization. The steel tank, with its swirling milk, is paired with found drawings and documents from her grandparents and Wagner’s poetic responses to them. Together these elements recall not only a specific place and moment in time, but also the attempt to recover a bond between the artist and her family."

- Chelsea Haines, Curator of "Second Nature" Parsons School of Design 2017 Thesis Exhibition

bulk milk cooling tank /   cool steel containment

earth /

agitator spinning / motor hum /    sweetness  

swirling time /

                   

                                                             somewhere    underneath 

the first taste  /                                   

bound to time /

 

                 its effects 

    a machine for /                                                                                          a memory of a machine                sighing   / a sigh 

not sadness /                  a futile task 

       where did the body that I came from     / care from                        
                                                                                                                                             / 
come from     / inherit / inherent     

cooing            /  soft across the field  

    murmur /   to meet underground     

 

heat radiating / slow round body                                    

                                                         tubes turn white       
 

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