The Things We Hold: Works by Cappy Counard

Frame Shop Gallery
October 2, 2009 through January 16, 2010

A free public opening reception will be held during
Gallery Night, Friday, Oct. 9, 2009 from 7–10 p.m.

In the Cappadocia region of central Turkey, people over many millennia have carved arched doorways into the weathered valley walls and volcanic “fairy chimney” rock formations. These discreet doorways, small details in the vast wind-carved landscape of the Central Anatolian Plateau, only hint at the extensive networks of underground dwellings, dovecotes, monasteries, even subterranean towns that lie beyond them. Stepping inside, it takes a few moments to adjust to the subdued light and to allow heat from the sun, clinging to clothing and skin, to dissipate into the cooler air of the stone entranceways.

It is these transitions between exterior and interior spaces, as well as a sense of quiet, reverie and discovery, that Cappy Counard sought to capture in her most recent jewelry and small metal sculptures.

The ideas, forms and surfaces draw on her travels to Turkey, Mexico and the Anasazi ruins at Mesa Verde. Phytomorphic elements—including actual seeds—stem from her love of gardening, a gift from her mother. These elements were also influenced by Counard’s study of Arabic tile and architecture, which often include botanical abstractions.

Counard has used strong geometries and careful details to give the work a monumental quality. Tiny openings cut into comparatively vast planes invite exploration. Soft edges and subtle surface undulations suggest centuries of erosion by wind and sand. The marks of repoussé and chasing mirror the hammer-and-chisel marks of architectural stone workers. Seeds—so complete, poignant, purposeful—embody potential and transformation, origin and future. Gold supports like Roman numerals count the passing of seasons, cycles and time.

These details beckon viewers. The small architectures, tiny openings, fine lines, captured seeds and subtle surface marks invite viewers’ focused engagement. They invite viewers to step closer and inquire further in a quiet moment.

Counard reflects, “Sometimes on the way to a special occasion I think, ‘this will be something to remember.’ But it’s something I saw on the way there—a leaf on the sidewalk—that I remember instead. So often what we remember are these moments that catch us by surprise, these small details.”

The pieces in this collection reflect on memory and observation, potential and realization: what we notice, what persists, the things we hold, the things that hold us.

Sarah Rossiter

I'd like to piece together a metaphor: our present-tense human experience, our lives in the inescapable present, are like living trees. Our memory of experience, our individual pasts, are like trees fallen in a river. The current in that river is the passing of time. And a story--a good, shared story--is a transfusion of nutrients from the old river log of memory into the eternal now of life. But as the current of time keeps flowing, the aging log begins to break down. Once vivid impressions begin to rot. Years run together. ...The last filaments of memory become gray mush, the mush becomes mud, the mud washes downriver.

There are, however, small parts of every human past that resist this natural cycle: there are hard, cross grained whorls of memory that remain inexplicably lodged in us long after the straight-grained narrative material that housed them has washed away. Most of the whorls are not stories, exactly: more often they're self-contained moments of shock or of inordinate empathy; moments of violence, uncaught dishonesty, tomfoolery; of mystical terror; lust; preposterous love; preposterous joy. These are ... the time-defying knots of experience that remain in us after most of our autobiographies are gone.

There are many things worth telling that are not quite narrative.  And eternity itself possesses no beginning, middle or end.  Fossils, arrowheads, castle ruins, empty crosses:  from the Parthenon to the Bo Tree to a grown man's or woman's old stuffed bear, what moves us about many objects is not what remains but what has vanished. ... My hope ... here, is to let go of what can't be saved, to honor what can and perhaps to make others more aware of, and more willing to accept and share, the same cycle in themselves.

David James Duncan
River Teeth

check out Cappy Counard's website
www.cappycounard.com