Shelley Spector receives Leeway Foundation Grant and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art Grant
January 30, 2013
Shelley Spector received an Art and Change Grant from the Leeway Foundation as well as a Faculty Development Grant from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for her installation "Mariposa".
Artist Statement on "Mariposa":
During the winter of 2010 I began to unweave an old, red, wool blanket - one that I used for many years after finding it (already old) in our cedar closet when I was a teenager. The two years of unraveling took me back in time and into my personal history.
I mirrored the process of change, which inspired the work, in a simultaneous doing and undoing. And, like making change, it required time, tenacity, focus, and the ability to let go. After I rewound the wool, enough to have made up a six foot square, onto hundreds of homemade spools, I remembered the small cloth manufacturer’s label that I removed to start the project. It said Mariposa, Spanish for butterfly, known for changing its form - an icon of transformation.