My ongoing goal is to create contemporary design reliquaries. They are built by painting
iconic images on the surface of patterned wall mounted wooden panel boxes with
imbedding containers that contain “relics” made from metal clay that has been fired in
the kiln, fusing it back into solid metal. They function similar to an advent calendar
with access to the relics achieved through small doors on the surface of the panels.
These reliquary objects are made to interrogate their innate tendency to cherish and enshrine
certain memories, images and relics of the past. The installation will include sounds and fragrances associated with sacred spaces, such as chanting, incense and battery-powered votive candles. By experimenting with cultural and social mash-ups I hope to give viewers an opportunity to consider alternate meaning in iconography. Familiar seeming objects will be reinterpreted, often in a transgressive way to confront social and cultural ideas about spirituality. Intensely precious in themselves, for me these artworks give rise to questions about our human need to venerate.
I have also been working on a line of hand painted ceramics I call Bug Out Ware.
For more information about Cat Manolis, please visit http://catmanolisart.com/ 