While salvaging her family home after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in the fall of 2012, artist Laura Petrovich-Cheney collected the remains left behind. The floorboards, shingles, windows, cabinets, furniture were repurposed into beautiful works of art.
Sampler 2015 at A.I.R. Gallery
Spot On 2014 at A.I.R. Gallery
“My art continues to be inspired by traditional American patchwork quilt designs—designs that are familiar and comforting,” explains Petrovich-Cheney. “I create new relationships between color, proportion, texture, and surfaces and never interfere with the original colors. The faded colors and tattered surfaces of the wood are a nostalgic glimpse into the past. The visual history of the salvaged wood — the chipped layers of paint, the nail holes, the grain — tells a story. I transform this salvaged wood into something new, fresh, and familiar. The work is rooted in repetition and pattern to mimic life, growth, regeneration, and tells a new story: What once was, is born anew.”
From Woman Made Gallery:
"The imperfections of the material reveal an aesthetic promise in the discarded remnants of daily life. I believe that there is refuge in organizing and arranging the chaos back into recognizable patterns . . . I piece together this salvaged wood into something meaningful and orderly, seeking solace from Hurricane Sandy. " - Laura Petrovich-Cheney.
From Petrovich-Cheney's Artists Statement: "Most recently, I have begun to collect wood from other parts of the country that have suffered environmental disasters - such as wild fires and tornadoes. This expands the conversation of using discarded scraps of wood that once had different purposes and broadens the idea of community. I am drawn to quilts because they are symbols of hope and infused with meaning - political, communal, familial, and personal."
Read about the Sprague Elementary School Project where students worked with Artist-In-Residence, Laura Petrovich-Cheney to create a 5' x 5' quilt using unwanted pencils. Working with students from Kindergarten through 5th grade to create 6" x 6" blocks, the blocks were assembled into the star patterns.