Remembered Sustenance | Part 1

My name is Cynthia Short Hurley. I’m the artist that made the piece you’re looking at now, “Remembered Sustenance.” The piece is composed of little generic four-legged critters that are migrating from right to left towards a curtain and a platter that’s on the ground and then away again. To me they were mules, but they’re young, clearly they’re young because of their proportions. And one reason I chose that because it’s located, the long narrow site is adjacent to the daycare centre there for Metro Centre, so something which the children might enjoy seemed appropriate, or something that spoke to the idea of childhood. And I did like the idea of them kind of coming out and playing on the pieces before they went in to the daycare centre. The title “Remembered Sustenance” is a little awkward but it’s the best I could come up with to indicate the idea of being fed by something in the past, a memory, an event, something you carry with you from the past. In the centre of the piece there you see the big curtain, which is kind of a mystery curtain, because it’s standing by itself. And on the left hand side the shape that kind of lifts up the curtain is bird-shaped. But if you look behind you’ll see that there is no bird there. So it’s like kind of an invisible bird, or a memory of a bird something that’s lifting something in the physical world but no longer exists in this world, which is kind of what a memory is to me.

Want to hear more? Check it out Part 2.

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