Stories Not Yet Spoken: Memory of Gasping
- Canvas citrus workers' bag, found shovel handle, beehives, lead plank, beeswax, clay, pigment, and audio with sounds of rustling orange branches, water, and traffic
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0 in
(0.0 cm)
- Johnny Coleman
"My working process is generated by narrative. For me, stories are containers of memories to be opened, opened again, and a shared."
- Johnny Coleman
Johnny Coleman received his MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 1992. Coleman earned critical acclaim for his powerful installations, including Stories Not Yet Spoken: Memory of Gasping. Coleman is known for making sculptures and installations that combine found objects with elements of sound and storytelling, and the result is work that is imbued with a strong sense of place and history. The installation includes elements that are trademarks of the artist's work: intimacy, metaphor, and memories. Based on Coleman's childhood years spent in the California orange groves, Memory of Gasping makes visible both the beauty and the struggle for survival that permeated that existence.
This particular work portrays a California that has been disappearing for the past few decades but still serves to define the state. It also expresses, through beauty and metaphor, the existence and hardship of the migrant workers who are such a vital part of California's cultural identity. This piece represents a fragment of a memory of growing up in the orange groves of Redlands, California. Twice a year, migrant workers leaned wooden ladders against the trees and loaded the fruit into the canvas bags draped over their shoulders. Furthermore, this work provides a strong connection to Escondido's own agricultural past.
- Created: 1999
- Collections: Permanent Collection