ARTIST STATEMENT

The demands of contemporary life can overload our minds with an internal dialogue that hinders creative engagement with the physical environment. Compounding our ability to engage with the physical world is an entertainment and media culture of flashing images that commands our attention. Careful observation of the living world is becoming an endangered activity in this hyper-saturated landscape of logos and brash images.

Children are immersed in this entertainment and media culture. They are the most desirable consumer group, a highly profitable target market from their toddler years into their teens. Bombarded by slick electronic and print images, they are placed in the position of "passive receptor". Hyper-stimulated by video games, they learn the "reactive" position. The intent of my work at Kidspace is to counter this culture by engaging the children in proactive and creative play, to encourage them to ask questions and carefully observe the world around them.

"Wonder Worlds" is an environment emerging from the potential of the common materials that I have assembled. Like the elements that make up our natural world, the pipe cleaners, pompoms, tape and twine interact with each other, producing a myriad of forms and structures. These materials have been chosen for their flexibility and complementary properties and are capable of generating a complex system of relationships and patterns. The playful and tactile quality of my materials beckons the viewer to take a closer look.

The installation is impermanent. It will exist and change in time. At the end of the show, the installation will be separated back into its component parts so that the materials may be recycled into new forms. The elements are available to form new relationships…new meanings.

Linda Price-Sneddon, 2004

About the Artist

Linda Price-Sneddon, an installation artist and painter residing in Boston, Massachusetts, has completed the Diploma Program of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She has taught in after school and camp programs at the Boston Public Library, Boston Center for the Arts, and the Montserrat School of Art, Beverly, Massachusetts. Price-Sneddon has been awarded artist fellowship grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the St. Botolph Club, and was awarded the John Singleton Copley Award in a juried show at the DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts. Her work has been in solo and group shows in such Massachusetts galleries and museums as: Essex Art Center, Lawrence; South End Public Library, Boston; Boston Center for the Arts; Montserrat College of Art Gallery, Beverly; Contemporary Art Center, North Adams; Copley Society, Boston; Babson College, Wellesley; and Hallspace Gallery, Boston.