MemoryKeeper

New York Poet Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Sarasota artist Judy Levine had a special connection when they met to start this collaboration for Art in Common Places. Both are life-long collectors of objects and memories, some of which are exhibited in this project. Jeanne Marie and Judy presented their project at a Speaking of the Arts event titled “Collaboration Conversations” for Arts Advocates on December 2, 2020.

Jeanne Marie’s statement: I have an abiding interest in the forms of poetry that took root in primitive, tribal, and ancient traditions and served key functions in the communities for which they were created, including poems of instruction, various sorts of lists and catalogues, poems of questions (or questions and responses), praise poems, chants, spells poems, and ritual poems. For this poem, especially because it will be going out into a community or “common place,” I wanted to use some aspects of this tradition while making a poem of memory and memorialization. The poem is suggesting how “To Keep” hold of what/who is loved, is lost, is remembered, via the remnants that survive. 

Judy’s statement: I use the art medium of assemblage and collage to create sculptures that I call Memorykeepers. These sculptures are composed of wooden boxes that create spaces to house mementos that document or symbolize memories of a person, place, or event in my life. I am influenced by Mexican iconography and vivid color. I use Mexican objects and folk art that I have collected on my trips there as my personal symbolism. They become my sacred shrines that tell a story of who and what I have loved, lost, and remembered by using what items survive.