Whitney Polich
About the Artist
My relationships with place play a significant role in my artwork because of an upbringing on a small farm in central Montana. I spent my childhood learning to listen to and interpret the physical language of place – all the particular sights, smells, sounds, textures, and tastes as something more. Over time, natural phenomena and forms not only foreshadowed natural outcomes but also represented intimate layers of dialogue. Deeper meaning was found through metaphors built around collective human emotion and memory. Poetry and myth were a way to grasp towards the horizon as places became an intersection of the physical and the non.
This feeling of place, the ineffable qualities allusive to both touch and tongue, are the experiences I seek to suggest for others with my multi-media installations.
In addition to the multi-media pieces, I am constantly drawing. Drawing functions as an archive to record en mass information and I have begun to incorporate video, sound, and photography as part of this process. The different layers within each work are a representation of my ongoing dialogue as I dissect my understanding and translate the world around me. Although the drawings don’t always lead directly to another work, the information is assimilated into my visual vocabulary.