Aileen Bassis
Art about Memory

I've been interested in public art for a while and have been tossing around ideas about how to design a
project that would be inclusive, opening up the art process to the public and opening my art making to
visual information that I didn't personally create.  

In June 2010, I created "Memory Maps" a public art project that was part of a weekend festival,
Figment2010 on Governors Island in the New York City harbor.  I made a thin wire web that attached to two
trees and invited people to draw a map of a place they remember on clear acetate and wired the maps
onto the web.  I photographed them in the act of remembering for a future project.  Over 85 people
stopped and made maps.  To my surprise, I often had people waiting for a clipboard and a chance to draw
their map.
I used the photographs of people remembering and their maps to make a group of work about
memory.  I made a long scroll using paper lithography while at an artist residency in Spain and
I'm currently making a group of wall collages that combine these images with quotes from
philosophers, "Philosophers Remember."   
This scroll is 24"H by about 14'W and its printed on Tyvek. It was the focal point of my
October 2010 window installation at Chashama266 here in New York City.

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Scroll
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I'm continuing to work with these images and I'm making a series entitled, "Philosophers
Remember" where I combine the images with quotes from philosophers.

This is "Bergson" 22 1/2 x 72" paper lithographs with mixed media.
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This is "St. Augustine,"  2010, 22 x 60" paper lithographs with mixed media
on view in a group exhibit, " Remembrance of Things Past" at
Gallery at 14 Maple, Arts Council of  Morris, Morristown, NJ,
September 8 - February 15.
Some of this work about memory will be in the exhibit, "The Continuous Thread" curated by Pamela
Cooper at the Printmaking Center of New Jersey.  January 7 2012 - March 31, 2012