Karen creates emotive connections to the past
In November last year local artist Karen Crosby set out on a mission to bring the past to life in a visually interesting and unique way. The outcome of which has resulted in her very own exhibition at the Stairwell Gallery at Number 34 High Street Sittingbourne entitled ‘Traces’
Prior to taking center stage and providing a short talk at the launch of the exhibition, Karen very kindly explained how all this has come about.
“When I first came to Sittingbourne in 1976 it was a really busy town and I loved all the quirky shops, the department stores, French restaurants and pubs. It was a nice place to be and I loved it here, but it’s gone through a period of demise with people shopping outside of town in places like Bluewater. It’s still a wonderful place which has twenty-three listed buildings and I wondered how you could get people to look up and see the architecture.”
“Then I met local historian Peter Paige who had hundreds of photographs and old postcards of Sittingbourne and he very kindly let me look through them I asked whether I could use them in an Art Project.”
“There were all these amazing little people in the photographs and using a macro lens I was able to take a close look. Then I had the idea of extracting them from the photographs and projecting them in the very same place they were standing in photograph a hundred years or so earlier.”
“In November we did this tour around Sittingbourne. It was like being a little tour guide, with my little projector giving a tour of the past and making them see all the buildings.”
“We had to try a number of different locations before we found the idea location, because sometimes it was too dark or too bright or there were too many reflections and we had to get this all underway before the Christmas lights switch on.”
“It worked really well in the graveyard. It was really eerie but wonderful as well, it takes you back in time, it connects you to the past to see Sittingbourne in a different way.”
Andy Hudson
Sittingbourne.Me