Established Gallery is pleased to present Turn-in-the-Path by Tegan Brozyna Roberts. The show runs from Friday, April 7th – Sunday, April 30th with an opening reception on Friday, April 7th from 7-9pm.

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Artist Statement

Drawing from a background in landscape painting as well as an interest in textiles, “Turn-in-the-Path” focuses on my relationship to place and geography, specifically my neighborhood in Brooklyn. I have a cartographic need to understand the world as well as a desire for communion - I want to experience the intimate in the immense landscape by breaking down its complexity. My practice is that of exploration and meditation. I create new landscapes in the form of woven collages by using found source material as my genesis. Borrowing from the language of weaving, clusters of painted paper are layered and suspended in space by the tension of threads. These dimensional collages are modular with small forms gathering together like stones accumulating into a mountain.

Material and process are vital to my practice. I am particularly inspired by the generations of seamstresses in my family as well as the quilting tradition of reusing fabric remnants. Scraps of clothing and everyday textiles reflect their origins even as they are reassembled into something new. Fascinated by this idea that material holds memory, I utilize paper, which retains the physical history of every mark and dent on its surface. By incorporating past drawings and paper fragments into each piece, I create a record of a generative process.

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The concept of “Turn-in-the-Path” comes from the lexicon of medieval illuminated manuscripts, specifically the Book of Kells. The term refers to the insertion of text or letters into the blank sections and margins of the page. This was a way for scribes to aesthetically emphasize the meaning of the words, but it also allowed them to innovate the layout of the page to correct for mistakes in transcription and to deal with physical imperfections in the calf-skin vellum. Similarly, I embrace this notion of finding freedom within the confines and limitations of my materials and process. The physical structure of the work is consistent (i.e. warp and weft/layer over layer), but each piece in “Turn-in-the-Path” is unique in composition and feel. Working intuitively, the layers build upon the ones preceding. It is a dialogue between myself and the work where I wrestle and finesse with the forms and threads to create a sense of harmony.

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