Memory Forms Nancy Dillon
I have these zinc charette forms—geometric primitives: cones, rectangles, cylinders, and pyramids. They’re anywhere from 4 to 12 inches high, depending on the shape. I display them as decorative objects, but their original intent was as a teaching tool for drawing class. The idea is the teacher arranges the forms in a still- life composition, and the students try to recreate it on paper, building 3D shapes on their 2D sketchpads. The exercise is designed to heighten the students’ awareness of shadow and light and how the two work together to construct solid form. The fact that the shapes are simple is key to the exercise. There is no complexity to distract from the underlying structure of the subject. The structure is the subject. When I think about the progression of my life through time, I imagine these dark forms stacked up against each other along a central line. The shapes form an irregular landscape: the pointy tips of the cones jut up from a low sea of broad rectangles; the cylinders, tall and thick, curve gently through space, tangential to the hard edges of straight shapes; the multiple facades of pyramids, all originating from a single point, slope downward, angled in different directions, bracketing negative space. These are the varying shapes and sizes of my memories arranged along the path of my existence. Some are strong pillars to hug and lean against and gain calm. Others are sharp and aberrant, stabbing up to heights high above the others; first to be seen and felt always with as much force as when they were formed. Some are there solely to define absence, the what-ifs and might-have-beens of angles unturned.
I zoom far above the arrangement, where I can analyze its form in total. From this height, I see where I’ve wasted time and expended too much energy building up elaborate structures that cut me off from my central path—the cragged nooks and recursive cul-de-sacs where I get lost and ruminate on distorted images and thoughts. This perspective allows me to grasp the magnitude of the towering heaviness that pushes down on me, holding me in place. From up above, I want to reach down and fix the imbalance in my composition, adjusting components, so that the more pleasing parts have a chance to be seen—a shift in balance between the ugly and the serene. In this way, I can alter bad memories of past events. And I don’t mean to change the outcome of what’s happened or forget the harm I felt. It’s more like introducing a little tweak in emphasis, or maybe even realizing something new, something that’s always been there but not first remembered. Something that, when recalled, makes me half-smile and say, “Oh yeah…that happened too.” For instance, I have this memory from second grade. I’m on the playground before the start of school. I wanted to play jump rope. The version where you have two people working each end, while others skip through. Approaching different clusters of girls, I held my rope out like an offering, “Wanna jump rope?” The girls giggled, a prelude to their refusals. After about three tries, I gave up. I was a quiet child—distant and calm…too calm. Even at this young age, I had a tendency to lock into a long, faraway stare, never thinking of anything. In third grade, one of my 60
