Anne Sherwood Pundyk
The Garden
by Anne Sherwood Pundyk
Anne Sherwood Pundyk’s The Garden presents a series of emotionally evocative abstract images with eleven semi-autobiographical single-page stories centering on themes of abandonment and loss. Suggestive of a variety of emotions, the works with their rhythmic geometric forms and layered washes of color - transparent and opaque, muted and bold - create contemplative spaces for reflection and processing. Mirroring as a tool for learning, especially as it relates to mothering, or a disruption to this process, conceptually joins the images and texts. Contrasting feelings of flux and balance run throughout The Garden generating a cyclical experience that wavers between steady and destabilizing. Stylistically reminiscent of children’s literature, Pundyk’s tales hint of secrets and truths, as they trace familial ties, tragedy, art, nature and a cathartic sense of sharing.
The Garden’s visible binding, with exposed, long, colored threads, highlights the physical joining of the book’s form, but also acts as a metaphor for the interwoven themes and motifs linking the images and written word. In particular, then idea of threads connecting family members bonded by genetics and experiences — at once tenuous and strong - capable of being broken and reestablished.
Pundyk originally created the images presented in The Garden on an American French tool Press but by Conrad Machine Company using Akua soy-based inks developed by Sue Rostov in Brooklyn, NY on Arnhem paper. She then photographed and re-composed them in Photoshop.
Three stories from The Garden were published in The Hoosac Institute in 2020.
Anne Sherwood Pundyk is an artist and writer based Mattituck, NY and New York City.
