Cartographies of Memory: Theorem, Collaboration, and Artistic Wayfinding

Join artist Amy Meissner in an online conversation with poet Elizabeth Bradfield and artist Antonia Contro about Theorem, their collaborative book that investigates topographies secrets through images drawn from mathematics, geometric forms, and maps themselves. Memory is fallible, and finding one’s wayback to a childhood truth can be difficult. The conversation will also delve into the paths that converged to bring Contro and Bradfield to this work, the new territories each encountered as their collaboration evolved, and how art- itself can become a map of process.

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Toward Antarctica, Once Removed, Approaching Ice, and InterpretiveWork as well as Theorem, a collaboration with artist Antonia Contro. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Kenyon Review, Orion, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship. She works as a marine naturalist/guide and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University. www.ebradfield.com

Antonia Contro is a visual artist whose work ranges from discrete objects to site-specific installations and concept-based collaborations that engage artists and practitioners from a variety of disciplines. Her art explores the nature of knowledge, memory, and time. Contro's exhibitions include Tempus Fugit at American Philosophical Society Museum, ExLibris at Chicago Cultural Center; Closed/Open, Newberry Library, and Descry at The Museum of ContemporaryPhotographywww.antoniacontro.com

Amy Meissner combines traditional handwork, found objects, and abandoned textiles to reference the literal, physical, and emotional work of women. Her textile work is in various collections including the Anchorage Museum, the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, and the Alaska Contemporary Art Bank. Her social practice focuses on the potentiality and prolonging of vulnerable objects through teaching clothing and textile repair as an alternative to a throwaway society.