Mary V. Marsh Artist's Statement

Looking at the patterns of everyday life, I make drawings and collect artifacts from my daily activities to explore issues of media, memory and persuasion. Reconstructing discarded book covers, making prints and artist’s books, I reflect on my need for reading and how the medium conveys the message.

Drawing in my sketchbook on my daily commute, I record people reading, engaged in their own private world within the public space. Relief prints, carved from the drawings, are hand-printed on discarded library cards, newspapers, and book pages, and over copier transfer on fine print paper. Old book covers are reassembled to suggest a different reading. The materials and techniques evoke a history of printing, suggest nostalgia for expiring mediums and chronicle the changing formats of reading.