A Quiet Normal Life: Megan Murphy VOLTA NY 2011

Megan Murphy, a renowned conceptual artist based in Sun Valley, Idaho, explores the intersection of history, contemporary culture, and recorded events in her thought-provoking artwork. Her innovative artistic practice combines film, video art, digital media, painting, and textual elements to create multi-layered pieces that challenge viewers' perceptions of time and place.

Murphy's installation "A Quiet Normal Life," showcased at VOLTA NY 2011, featured four large-scale paintings on low iron glass and mirror. These striking pieces, inspired by the Canadian border of Idaho's old growth cedar forests, exemplify Murphy's unique creative process:

- Mixed media art: Combining digital photography, painting, and text

- Layered technique: Applying 20-40 layers of paint and text

- Subtractive process: Sanding away layers to reveal hidden depths

- Reflective surfaces: Using glass and mirror to incorporate viewers into the artwork

The resulting images appear still and ethereal, with faint horizontal lines of text visible beneath the surface. Murphy's carefully curated textual elements include:

- St. Thomas' Inquiry into Silence

- Wallace Stevens' poems "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour" and "A Quiet Normal Life"

- Excerpts from Kim Barns' "In the Wilderness"

These literary selections explore themes of presence, silence, and place, enhancing the visual impact of Murphy's work. Viewers standing before these captivating pieces find themselves literally reflected in the artwork, their gaze returned from within the faded layers of history. This immersive experience exemplifies Murphy's ability to blur the lines between past and present, observer and subject.

Key concepts in Megan Murphy's "A Quiet Normal Life" installation:

- Conceptual art

- Historical events and locations

- Contemporary culture

- Subjectivity of recorded history

- Multi-media artistic practice

- Reflection and illumination of time

- Presence through silence and place