Pocket Art Swap 9: Myth — Megan Elaine Wirick

Pocket Art Swap 9: MYTH
A community exhibition featuring 240 works from 16 local artists!

Myths have captured our collective imagination for centuries… told around a fire, over meals, within communities and passed on to new generations. Some tell of heroes, gods and goddesses, mysteries that confound and try to explain the unknown, while others explain the creation of the world and its inhabitants. You can find a myth around every corner and under every stone.

Much like the square and the rectangle, myths are stories, though not all stories are myths. At times hard to define or pin down, there is a deeper essence of the profound inside a myth. An ancient quality that has matured with the ages as it’s been told and retold. The works in this exhibition add new iterations to timeless symbols. Each artist landed on a departure point that has spoken to them in some way. The resulting collections are visual testaments to the importance and relevance of myth in its many forms.

Exhibition Statement from Curio

Virtual Exhibition

I started with collecting moments and images on my camera roll. With this, I created 15 pencil drawings inspired by Pennsylvania Folk Art. I made an effort to add patterns, repetition and symmetry. The drawings we (my lovely wife helped me) then made into cyanotypes, a photo-like method. My pocket art swap pieces are a personal mythology made of “glimmers.” Glimmers are quiet joys often reflected in a camera roll, an object, a moment. The cyanotypes create a dreamy anthology of modern folklore.

Throughout the pieces there are symbols featured such as plants, cats, butterflies. Objects that are in my home that represent my space. Places I pass on walks. Tender moments that I look forward to and help me feel grounded.

Row 1 (L-R):
1. “Morning Light” - The center piece of this work is my bedroom picture window.
2. “Gemini” - This image represents my mother. My favorite Gemini and a grounding force in my life.
3. “Ocean Constellation” - From the hundreds of photos of the ocean that are trapped on my phone screen.
4. “If we were planters” - Planters that live on my bedroom windowsill. A representation of my wife and I. The internet would say “us”
5. “Dancing with you” - Boots like the ones I wore on my wedding day.
Row 2 (L-R):
6. “Virna & Veronica” - The cats I pass every morning when walking to work. My greatest skill - spotting cats in windows (or anywhere).
7. “Matriarch” - Fixtures of my Grandparents’ house. A symbol of my hometown and my family.
8. “Strawberries in January” - A vase that was left behind from the previous tenant of the apartment my mother moved into.
9. “The Portal at Musser” - There is a fae trap at Musser Park, if you look close enough.
10. “The Plantie” - An homage to some older work and a favorite plant.
Row 3 (L-R):
11. “Sweet Shadows” - A drawing of a cyanotype that was then turned into a cyanotype. A representation of trying.
12. “Have you cried today?” - I heal my inner child every time I have a good cry.
13. “Little Treat” - The deflection of my genuine shopping addiction.
14. “Beach Treasures” - Beach Treasures clutter my spaces but they don’t fill the void.
15. “Glimmers” - Story telling starts with the mundane.

MYTH 5 - “Dancing with you”, 2.5” x 3.75”, Cyanotype, 2024

A week’s worth of drawings and a great way to reconnect with my studio space. Using pencil was a low stakes way to make dainty drawings.

Editing scans to create negatives that are used to create the cyanotpyes.

The Portal at Musser photo from camera roll

MYTH 9 - “The Portal at Musser”, 2.5” x 3.75”, Cyanotype, 2024

I recently read this article titled I Regret What’s in My Camera Roll (go read this - it will make you think more about why your photos no longer have people in them) which is an exploration into what the author thought about the changes they were seeing over the years with the images that are on their phone’s camera roll. The author talks about their camera roll changing from candid out of focus, less appealing photos to hyper curated photos of “aesthetics” landscapes, objects, consumerism. Because we are constantly being marketed and sold to we are likely absorbing and mirroring these traits, tastes, and even values in our own photography to sell our own versions of ourselves on social media. We are often taking photos that portray falsehoods and a performance of what we want others to believe.

I have become interested in the idea that photos albums don’t exist in the same way that they used to. They went from physical books that family’s slowly added to and pass down to a few different digital versions. First photo albums on Myspace and Facebook as a collection of a images sometimes taken on a trip or in a day. The “bad” photos (blurry, unflattering, doubles) were often included for convenience and laughs. Now photo albums are an Instagram grid or “photo dump.” Or an aesthetic phone camera roll trapped and never to be printed.

While I do agree with a lot of what the author is dissecting in this article. Specifically a disconnection that is happening with ourselves and our community. I do think there is beauty sprouting from the “aesthetic” camera roll. And not just superficial marketable beauty (although that is often what it’s use-value is portrayed as).

The author puts in bold Story telling is not living. But, is it not?

Are these photographs any different than master painters works of still lives, landscapes, empty spaces?

Is this not the same as folklore, myths?

We only get the grand versions of the stories that are passed down to us, not the mundane “boring” everyday life. I had a conversation with a coworker about how we crave fantasy. Social Media does portray a fantasy but that’s not totally terrible, right? Isn’t it up to us to find beauty around us? Whether that is a portal in the park across the street or a queer Chappell Roan tribute night out. It’s up to us to find beauty around us but we should be conscious and critical of what we are capturing and we must abstain from the credulous trap of absorbing other peoples values as our own. With this, I will continue to add to my camera roll of 14,690 photos and maybe even get some printed.

When I talked to my mom about my wedding photos. I stated that I was disappointed in them because I felt/feel insecure about my appearance. She simply asked “Were you happy?” and I said “Yes.” and her reply was “Then that’s all that matters.” Aesthetics don’t matter - all that matters is the moment. But I don’t believe it is frivolous to like beautiful artifacts, events or abstractions.

Can we do both? Admire beauty and aesthetics and (accurately) document real life? Art history tells us that accuracy is not absolute and story telling is authorized.

Bedroom Picture Window - Image from 2022

MYTH 1 - “Morning Light”, 2.5” x 3.75”, Cyanotype, 2024

- Megan Elaine Wirick-Yinger