Wendy Fernstrum

Wendy Fernstrum

Website: http://fernwerks.com

When does a beginning begin and an ending end? At what point does an ending become a beginning? My work explores this in-between space where identity is constantly shifting and all that seemed certain loses form.

Intellectually we like buckets, divisions, distinctions – yet the universe reveals our dualities a folly. For many of us, life and death seem to be separate dualities. Deeper inquiry reveals the
separation of life and death as a human construct. Each of us is living and dying simultaneously; 300 million cells die every minute in our bodies even as we generate 200 billion new cells each day. We start dying the minute we are born.

Where does each of us begin and end? Are the drops of water in the ocean distinct? In my work I explore individuality within a united oneness, and the continuum of beginnings and endings.
Although my diptychs present two distinct images – presence and absence, beginning and end –they transcend “either/or” to convey “and/both.”

The line that appears in much of my work represents the thread that connects us all and theunique strand that we are or the distinct mark we make in the world.