Teri Dryden
“I grew up in a house of paper that could burn up, rip apart or blow away at any given moment. I learned very early in life that nothing lasts—not love, home or family—and that I couldn’t trust a soul. Like a feral cat. It still hurts when I remember my 16-year-old self feeling so insecure and insubstantial that when my father left us it almost made sense.
I was the oldest of four kids in a lower middle-class Irish Catholic family on the outskirts of Baltimore. My dad was a cop. My mom was a jack-of-all-trades—waitress, bookkeeper, mother, wife. She was always sad. I think what kept us together during those years was a keen sense of humor that gave us hope and belief that life is what you make it.
Using paper as a metaphor for home, my exhibition of new work addresses the themes of memory, loss, shame, and the fragile and tenuous connection of family while embracing the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which celebrates what is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.” --Teri Dryden, 2024
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