This work is on view for Artists Respond, a virtual exhibition hosted by the Spencer Museum of Art featuring new work by artists who have previously collaborated with the museum and the University of Kansas communities. Artists were invited to share work and respond to our current moment. Submissions reflect issues including life during a global pandemic, systemic racism, and climate change.

The Life of Things

This series of drawings began during my residency at Marble House Project, in Vermont, in the summer 2019. Fascinated by the beauty of my surroundings, I began to sketch fervently and soon realized that drawing on location was not an exercise of skill, but rather an opportunity to connect with a deeper part of myself. The Life of Things grew out of my daily sketchbook practice, filled with intimate encounters with the raw materials of life: the light filtering through a window, the turquoise water in the quarry pool, the velvety touch of marble, the mysterious objects in the house. But did the objects elicit the stories? Or were the stories lingering, waiting patiently to land in my sight?

Living in quarantine forces us to return to ourselves, to become aware of our own mortality and the vulnerability of being human. In my current practice, I embrace journaling as a process of befriending myself and reconnecting with my innermost feelings while swathed in beauty, vulnerability, and contradiction.

I swear I had a plan

But, upon arrival

The objects in the house began to swell

With stories

Begging to be told

And memories to rekindle

Fantasies, yet to be realized

And the Life of Things came upon me

And it poured

And the journey began

María Velasco, September 2020