We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot

The exhibition “To Arrive Where We Started” grew out of conversations between Ypsilanti based Amy Sacksteder and New Zealander Fiona Short about common themes in their artistic practices. The title, a quote from T.S. Eliot, can be read as a summing up of their respective global wanderings or as a shared tendency of returning to earlier work to see what more it can reveal with time. Either way it indicates awareness of balancing new experience with reflection and looking again.

Sacksteder’s work is rooted in painting and drawing, but for this show might also include installation. Combining source material from her surroundings, life experiences and historical context, and often incorporating landscape and natural imagery, she constructs documents of time and place that are both beautiful and complexly referenced.

Short’s subtle and enigmatic photographs are grounded in the ordinary and are as much about the process of looking as about what is being looked at. Her images reveal a sense of place and order, engaging the viewer in the way that a quiet voice may command attention. One senses that for Short, each image is a small lesson, a discovery of unexpected delight, and that each photograph is an opportunity to communicate this discovery.

Biographies

Amy Sacksteder received a BA in English from the University of Dayton in 2001 and an MFA in painting from Northern Illinois University in 2004. She currently lives and works in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she is an Associate Professor of Art at Eastern Michigan University.

Fiona Short completed her MFA at The Glasgow School of Art in 2009 and has since travelled to New Zealand, Iceland and the US to participate in residencies and exhibitions. She currently lives and works in Glasgow, and teaches in the Continuing Education Department at The Glasgow School of Art.

The two artists met at the SÍM Residency Reykjavik in June 2010.