Title: Artist statement

Identifier: SOAD5455   (https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/55329)

Description: The dreaming: a senior exhibition by Sterling Lieske, BFA candidate in Painting and Drawing. The title of this show borrows its name from a mythological “timeless” time in Australian Aboriginal history called the “dreaming." During this time, also called the “dreamtime,” it is believed that supernatural beings and ancestral creator-spirits transformed the landscape into the earth we know today. “Dreamtime” is described as a place comprised of the past, present, and future. Indigenous Australians also use the “dreaming” to refer to their story of Creation. This collection was created over the span of four months, in which I set out to create six garments to represent six dreams of mine that I have deemed significant. Each garment is a mixture of original hand-printed and painted fabrics, and found materials including worn bed-sheets, gifts from my ancestors and bits of my childhood. These works help me understand my dreams on a deeper level. They reveal to me precious parallels and personal symbols which may have been impossible to see without creating physical versions of the dreams to exist together. These pieces are in garment-form, providing me an opportunity to symbolically be inside of the dream, within the boundaries of this world, and bridge the two places, or overlap them. Standing with the garments, observing them,  makes real for me a recurring dream that I have of standing in front of collections of clothes, intensely studying the fabric and embellishments. I live here and I live in the world of dreams. I live here and there. I breathe, I think, I see, I feel, I smell, I taste, I love, I remember here and there. When I create I am here and there….but are we always? Whether my eyes are open or closed, I gain vision.