Kendall Messick

Kendall Messick 2006
Untitled
Archival Pigment Print
edition of 15
14" x 14"

On the morning of May 4th, 2006, as I neared the end of a year-long, painstaking restoration of my 1903 home, a fire tore through the second floor, destroying half of the building as well as a large and cherished collection of art, including some of my own work. For the previous fifteen years, my work had consisted of long-term mixed media photography and film-based installations that documented individuals and communities on the verge of disappearing. And so, after I got over the initial shock, I saw the opportunity to document my own life as a collector and artist, and started what would become a three-year documentation of the remains and the traces left behind. What had at first seemed an unrecoverable loss was transformed, through the restorative power of art, into images of surprising beauty that both preserve and transcend my memories of what was lost.


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