If I Had a Flower for Every Time I Thought of You...
I Could Walk Through My Garden Forever
Alicia Renadette
September 21 – October 28, 2023
Reception September 21, 6-8pm
Paper Nautilus Books
19 South Angell St, Providence
Alicia Renadette is a multi-disciplinary artist who explores the potential of symbolic transformation in everyday things. In curbside piles and thrift shop isles, Renadette seeks out those objects initially intended to either assist with domestic comfort, or distract from internal conflict. With If I Had a Flower for Every Time I Thought of You...I Could Walk Through My Garden Forever, rescued flowers from the tangled brush of a cemetery landscape are given new meaning in the form of sculpture and collage. Speaking on the work, Renadette explains:
“This sculpture is made primarily of disassembled artificial flowers collected from leaf piles and litter-filled trash bags in the Oakland Cemetery on the Cranston / Providence line. In this cemetery, grass grows tall, headstones are pushed over, trenches are covered with rotting plywood, and litter collects. Privately owned, there is no discernible routine maintenance of the grounds. Despite the neglect, gravesites are visited frequently, as evidenced by overflowing shrines with slender glass candles, heart-shaped wreaths, bouquets of fake flowers, stuffed animals, and family photographs.
When I lived nearby, I’d walk the grounds to read tombstones and collect stray flowers that had blown off the graves, mixed in with the dusty long grass and tangles of prickers. I had mixed feelings and questions about the practice of commemorating life with what could be construed as litter leading to blight, but the more time I spent walking there, the more I came to empathize with this act— thinking of artificial flowers instead as an everlasting token of love.”
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Alicia Renadette has been exhibited nationally with shows at the Sculpture Center (NY); Southern Exposure (San Francisco); Brattleboro Museum and Art Center (VT) and at the Governor's Island Art Fair (NYC). She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BFA in Experimental Studio/ Sculpture from the Hartford Art School, and has been the recipient of grants from Rhode Island State Council of the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center and the local cultural councils of Holyoke and Lowell, MA.. She currently lives and works in Providence, RI and is the Gallery Director at Overlap, a contemporary arts space in Newport, RI.
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Permanent Collection is a series about things found, how they were found, and how what was found is shared. Produced by Ben Sisto. Thanks to Paper Nautilus Books, Gallery Night Providence, Dye House, Hudson Street Deli, The Classic, and The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities.