Ginger Owen-Murakami & Vicki Van Ameyden, Heritage Habitats

Ginger Owen-Murakami & Vicki Van Ameyden, Heritage Habitats

November 26 – December 28, 2018
Opening reception: Thursday,  November 29, 6 – 8 p.m.
Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.

Collaborating artists Ginger Owen-Murakami and Vicki VanAmeyden have come together to create the installation, Heritage Habitats. In this show they have framed the work around nostalgia and memory where these Michigan artists have created physical spaces where as they explain in their artist statement “the viewer may reference their own memories and experiences to engage with the work.”

The two use appropriated images from their family albums that offer a more iconic and universal reading of ancestry, merging the images with other materials  to create pieces entitled Grove, Roots, and Heartwood. Each piece references the human experience. “They are concerned with aspects of imaging oneself in the genealogical lineage while contemplating basic life stages: birth, infancy, youth, adulthood, old age, and ultimately death” Owen-Murakami and VanAmeyden explain in their artist statement.

Owen-Murakami is an Associate Professor of Photography and Intermedia at Western Michigan University and VanAmeyden uses her Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking to create work that explores the human condition.