Occasionally, art and science come together so that each can breathe new life into the other.
Artist Patricia Moss-Vreeland has joined the theme of memory and mixed-media arts in her exhibition “Revelations and Transformation, Layers of Memory,” now on display at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine’s “Art of the Mind” gallery space.
Her works stand as visual responses to what memory is and how it functions. Using photography, drawings, paintings, poetry, and other mixed media, memory becomes a portal to creativity.
The exhibition will remain in the hallway of the Second Floor of the South Pavilion until October.
“We like the arts because they entertain, they distract, they otherwise amuse, but also we know that they engage and provoke us,” said Penn Memory Center Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish at the opening reception last month. “That’s why we’re here tonight and that is what has brought artists and scientists together both in the task of provoking, creating, and understanding new ideas.”
Striking visuals are just one part of the works’ impact on visitors, said Marsha Moss, curator for the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
“She also used poetry at times to suggest ways that language and memory are intertwined and how different forms of knowledge help to reveal our place in the world,” she said. “Patricia explores memory as a meditation on who we are.”
Vreeland-Moss said she hopes her work will evoke in her audience the memory of an object, time, or place that leads down a path of revelation and towards deeper inward discovery.
“We all become creators through the lens of memory,” she said.
Moss-Vreeland has had works exhibited nationally at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art. Her art resides in permanent collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Norton Museum. She is the author of the book, “A Place for Memory: Where Art and Science Meet,” published in 2013.
Her exhibit replaced “Typical Day,” a photography project that allows older adults living with mild cognitive impairment to document their lives as they address their condition. To learn more about “Typical Day,” visit www.mytypicalday.org
— by David Ney