Abi Wright

Abi Wright

Mixed Media [Birmingham, AL]

Abi Wright is a 2008 graduate of the University of Alabama, with a BA in studio art with a concentration in painting and a minor in liberal arts.

My main material used is aged books. These books mostly have been thrown out, discarded, and I want to give them a new life. Sometimes the creations become whimsical and fanciful, while other times they hold more serious weight.

My purpose is to explore the relationships we have with books, their life as they go from being a cherished journey to being forgotten on a shelf, to being thrown out. I am only another part of the process, resurrecting the old and making it into something new. In different way, I also see these books as metaphors for the intentional and unintentional forgetting, deleting and editing and creating of history, whether personal or on a larger level.

I use mainly collage elements of found objects, and use acrylic medium as the glue that holds it all in place. Using a wood burner, I sear into the open book itself to create shapes. In the more painterly pieces, I layer paint, found objects, interesting papers and photographs until the desire composition is achieved.