Feature Articles


September Issue 2000

Artspace in Raleigh, NC, Features Works by Madonna Phillips

Artspace in Raleigh, NC, will feature the exhibition, The Comforts/Discomforts of Home, by Madonna Phillips. The exhibition will be on view in the center's UpFront Gallery from Sept. 1 through Sept. 30.

It's been a long road home for mixed media artist, Madonna Phillips. Her concept of "home" is a complex mix of being raised in a mill town, becoming a 19 year old mom, surviving and running away from a bad marriage and a variety of calamities, and finally growing into a place of peace with a wonderful marriage in a house that is truly a home.

"I have finally arrived", states Phillips, "and I am finally old enough to look back now." Long ago, she spent much time 'running away' from home -- wanting something better, real, beautiful. Home to her now is a spiritual haven, where she can be renewed daily and where she can escape the world when it's not right. Home is her sanctuary and she has fought hard to make it so.

"Home is fleeting", Phillips explains. It is evolving for each of us and is full of memories and aspirations that are ours alone. Recurring Home Dream, a major piece in the exhibit at Artspace, is loosely based on and inspired by the novel, White Oleander, by Janet Fitch. The narrator in the novel, a young girl who is moved from foster home to foster home as her mother does time in jail for murder, describes her home. She talks of seeing people walking their dogs, the chink of the dog collars, drinks clinking by the apartment complex pool, the way the moon is hung, wind chimes, the smell of eucalyptus. She wishes she could put the feeling of this moment in a locket to keep it always, to keep the memory frozen in time. But you can't keep home the way it was, Phillips believes. As Thomas Wolfe wrote in Look Homeward Angel, "You can't go home again."

Phillips is an award winning mixed media artist known for her wacky reminiscences of America in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. She has been an exhibiting artist in prominent craft shows such as the Northern Virginia Fine Art Show and Coconut Grove in Florida. She will be exhibiting at the St. Petersburg, Florida Arts Center in January. She is a member of Piedmont Craftsmen and the Carolina Designer Craftsmen. Phillips works in her studio at Artspace and lives in Raleigh, NC.

For further information check our NC Institional Gallery listings or call the Gallery at 919/821-2787 or check them out on the web at (http://www.artspace.citysearch.com).

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