Katie Green & Wren Ross — Liminal Spaces

Wren Ross is a works on paper artist whose dreamlike and sometimes bizarre narratives inhabit a space that is both severe and sensitive. With a personal practice centered on empathetic engagement and intuitive markmaking, her body of work is firstly concerned with the ritual of noticing, and celebrates the mundane, the simple and the overlooked. Born and raised in Utah, Wren graduated with an Bachelor's degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006. Influenced by myth, allegory and the mark-making traditions of prehistoric peoples, her work seeks to create a space for introspection and dialogue in an ever-shifting political, social and environmental climate. Wren's work includes traditional materials, namely water-based drawing and painting tools, as well as materials found in the natural world, such as a herbs, minerals, earth and salt.

The work that comes through is invited in: I am a conduit. It is a fearful role, but working through the fear is how I win favor with the image, how I vet myself. One safeguard is erasure, obfuscation and the death of an image by eclipse. This is painful and causes grief but is an honorable offering. All the works have hidden histories and complex identities, as wiping out, starting over and obliterating are a critical part of the process. I want them to have wholeness and cohesion without losing rawness, tenderness, wildness. They express themselves as the only iteration of a set of particular ideas in existence, and so I also want them to be free of the burden of intrinsic meaning. I want them to mean something different to each viewer, I want their explanations to be soundly perceived in a way that cannot be incorrect. The work must offer a gentle but firm space that asks the viewer to investigate their own connections with meaning, connection and self-reflection.

I identify as a super-empath, that is, information is fiercely coming from all angles, at all speeds and intensities at all times. Making art is cathartic release, is divine digestion, is recovery, is sorting out essential components. Part of this metabolizing is a natural consequence of being trauma-informed social worker with a private practice. This role, which is not really much different than a fine artist, I willingly hold space for discomfort and help my patients work within the constraints of the container of their physical bodies. My artwork then, is the result of taking in, holding and letting out. Not confluence but metamorphoses or synthesis. I have been working with myth, sacred symbolism, oracles and methods of divination for many years. I appreciate that each aspect within a myth has its own meaning and identity but also contributes to the integrity of the story overall. In no small way, each of my works is an oracle unto itself- a compassionately vacuous space into which questions can be called and answers echoed. Since November of 2024 I have been struggling to metabolize the information and implications of contemporary politics. Using myth and symbolism has been helpful with this, particularly the idea of personifying ideas or emotions. It is in this way that the garments came into being: The idea is that experiencing current events felt like a bodily experience versus just taking in audio or visual information. My personal experience has much more in common with wearing a piece of clothing than anything else- it is heavy, cumbersome, rigid, unwieldy, uncomfortable, ill-fitting and hard to fully understand. The jackets are physical manifestations of this experience- they are not made with fabric meant to move with the body, nor designed to be decorative. They resist being photographed and are hard to posture in.

These vessels are structural drawings, using the term "works on paper" to describe not only the two dimensional drawings on their surfaces, but also the three dimensional content of their structure. The vessels were made during an exploration of kinds of offerings left at the Temple of the Delphic Oracle in ancient Greece. Much in the same way "works on paper" or the notion of drawing are umbrella terms to describe a wide array of technique and medium, I propose that these vessels are themselves works on paper being made of the physical metamorphosis of paper and markmaking tools. Included in these vessels are coins, wood ash, smoke stains, monoprints, serigraphs and hand drawing. All join to honor the concept that, in the way of a reliquary, the container of an offering must be suitable to its contents. Questions posed at the Delphic oracle were likely the same questions modern people might ask when looking for guidance from higher sources. These were queries about truth, safety, meaningful outcomes, decision making, love, law and life. They therefore span the great stretch of time between ancient Greece and today and nevertheless remain relevant during times of political dissonance and interpersonal conflict.

wren-ross.com

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