Artist Statement:
The church banner is an image which has immediate connections to military endeavors or markers of claimed territory. That these objects slowly morphed into the docile, permissible decoration you might commonly find in an American church does not strip the banner of all of it’s hidden functions. The swooping, golden script font reading “Peace” is displayed on an object that defies the word in it’s design.
When reshaping a church banner as an art object, I wanted to distance the objects from their passive and non-invasive structure. The crumpled textures project out into the physical space rather than staying flat against the wall and metal spikes punch through the delicate, motherly fabric of doilies to create a stark contrast of soft vs. aggressive. The object is intentionally complicated and iconoclastic. The images painted onto the crushed fabric are deformed and distorted, so the previously simple process of meaning-making is subverted in favor of mysterious. The object is both beautiful and ugly.
Some of this intent was about validating and embracing the kind of pain an individual may carry into a church space. To validate internal pain with what appears to be physical wreckage is a way of dignifying the harder edges of reality. It is a way to reframe meaning by integrating and permitting damage and complexity into an object often built both to be neglected and to unintentionally or intentionally neglect it’s own history . It was the effort to create a banner that seeks to acknowledge pain and complicated, unpleasant historical narratives in the effort to dignify and reclaim space for the weak and wounded.
Bio:
Levi S. Nelson is a painter who studied at the Rocky Mountain College of Art. In addition to his B.A. in Illustration, he spent several years as a textile designer. His work centers around themes of damage, fragility, and loss. He has shown work in various spaces throughout Denver and was selected to participate in a juried show in California last year. Levi is from Lander, Wyoming, has lived in Denver, and currently resides in Salem, MA.