©Liz Steketee

Liz Steketee has recently opened a solo exhibition, Remember This at the Jen Tough Gallery in Santa Fe, NM that runs through October 27, 2024. Remember This is a combination of several bodies of work created over many years of testing the limits of photography and mixed media work.

“I’ve long used montage/collage and sewing as a vehicle for exploring memory. The bodies include Ghost Books, Sewn Diary, and Entangled. All the work is centered of the human experience of ever-changing memory and the effect of photography on this process.

Remember This is an exploration of memory as a fluid construct, as a photograph, and as fabric and highlights where these elements converge. Photographs unveil visual memory while fabrics disclose physical memory. Together, they flesh out indelible memories. I believe we construct and edit memory over time. The combination of my photographs with collage and textiles has provided me with the ability to construct and mend my own memories.”

©Liz Steketee, Install for Remember This

Process:

SEWN archival digital photographic prints, thread, and dye.

I keep a daily photo diary to document my family and my life.

The process provides visual memory, and quiet contemplation in a complex and fast moving world.

My intent is to make visual the chaotic stew of pieced together memories in my mind.

Old and new blending, experiences taking on specific color, with missing parts and exaggerated points just as I keep them in my mind.

I print the images in batches, then cut, rip, and reorder the pieces. Deconstructed. Next, the pieces are collaged intuitively, often forcing awkward combinations that mirror my own memory process

The combinations are then mended with thread into a constructed memory. Lastly, the unique sculptural pieces are dyed to congeal the paper fibers. The pieces in this series are purposefully raw and unrefined, recalling the raw and rough nature of childhood when formative memory is strongest.

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

Liz Steketee was born in Michigan and lives in Marin County California with her family.  She has both a BFA and MFA in photography, digital media, and mixed media.  For 11 years, after completing her master’s degree, Liz taught on the San Francisco Art Institute photo faculty. She specialized in digital imaging, mixed media, and bookmaking. In 2017, Liz moved into a full time studio practice. Her work focuses the notions of photography and its role in memory, and identity. In her practice, Liz utilizes her photography in combination with textiles, sewing, sculpture, and installation.

Instagram: @lizsteketee

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

Artist Practice:

Through the use of photographic montage, textiles, sewing, and installation, my work investigates making of memory, and the role of the photograph in this neural process.  My practice focuses on the use of multiple collage techniques to create a sense of chaos, a stew of memories. I consider memory a construct and an ever changing fluid state. I am inspired by vernacular photography and textiles as both hold onto human experiences in unique ways. Photography grants us visual memory, while fabrics hold physical memory in their threads. A powerful combination when paired. I seek to understand the complex emotions that exist together at the same time-humor and sadness—beauty and fear. The contradictions are endless and fascinating. Time and time again, I find myself revisiting the theme of memory and what is real. Much of my memory feels blurry from childhood and I have used photographs from the past to help me form memories I hold today.

I’m particularly interested in how photography can be stretched beyond its traditional forms and can merge with other media to expand its meaning. I use my family archive and my personal diary to do this. I employ a breaking and mending process in all my work, taking ripped and cut fragments and sewing them back together in unexpected combinations . Deconstruction of imagery forces contemplation.  Reconstruction acts as a mending of that which feels broken or disparate.  Together these processes result in my constructed memory of my life experiences. Memory is sewn together, constructed. At the heart of my work is the notion that it is the ordinary in life that is truly extraordinary, that memories are fluid and ever-changing. Memories change form each time we bring them up in our minds. This concept lends itself to an ephemeral quality I use in my work.  Nothing and no one is permanent. I am especially tied to family memory and the expanded notion of the family album as a vehicle toward understanding universal themes in human experience.

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This

©Liz Steketee, Remember This