Thedra Cullar-Ledford
Uncanny Mother
January 2 to January 27, 2024
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 4th from 5:00 to 8:00 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, January 13th, 1 pm
View the Online Presentation Here
Prince Street Gallery is pleased to present recent work by Thedra Cullar-Ledford, Uncanny Mother.
With Uncanny Mother, the artist asks herself:
“Why do I care about my parents’ expectations of me? Why does it feel like I’m just a plaything? Could I ever be anybody other than the person they shaped me to be?”
In the past six months, the artist and her husband moved from Houston, Texas to the tiny community of Rensselaerville, NY. As soon as the last boxes were unpacked, her mother back in Houston had a health issue which meant she could no longer live alone. Moving always forces an assessment of what is worth keeping, often measured by the emotions that are wrapped up in an object. Moving her own, as well as her mother’s things, has been a tsunami of memories and difficult choices. Like Louise Bourgeois, Thedra processes these emotionally-laden objects from her life into art.
The largest works in the show are the end result of a whole sequence of interventions. 1) rummage in an old box she moved from a storage shed to find one of her childhood dolls. 2) Photograph it in high resolution, then throw it away. 3) Print the photo large enough that the doll becomes Thedra-sized. 4) Paint out the background using a different skin tone from that of the doll. 5) Dig in a different old box to find and attach a dress that her mom made for her as a child but that nobody else wants. 6) Carefully document the collaged piece, then throw that into the trash. 7) Make prints as needed.
A residency in Oshkosh provided another opportunity to process a different box of childhood detritus. She and her husband stayed in a grand Victorian, the Doe House, that looks just like a dollhouse Thedra always wanted but never had. In it, she arranged scenes just like a child would. By positioning the doll close to the camera and the furniture in the background they made the doll large to fit the house instead of making the house small to fit the doll.
These dolls are not only artifacts from her childhood that need to be dealt with. They also resonate strongly as metaphors of Cullar-Ledford’s lived experience. Her parents, both artists themselves, made her in their own image, burdened with all their hopes, dreams, and insecurities, loving her when she played the character they wanted and ignoring her when she didn’t. Collectors gather artists as much as objects, each one occupying a particular niche in their portfolio that constrains growth or change for those artists. The farther she gets from childhood, the more she has come to realize that we are all playthings to everybody else.
About the Artist
Thedra Cullar-Ledford received a BFA cum laude in painting from the California College of the Arts and earned an MA in printmaking and sculpture at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University. She and her husband recently moved from Houston, Texas to the Hudson River Valley. Her work is widely exhibited, including a 2016 solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston. She shows her work regularly at Heidi Vaughan Fine Art, Houston and frequently with Bill Arning Exhibitions in Kinderhook, NY. She and her husband have two grown sons.
For more information see:
Artist’s website: independenceartstudios.com/thedra2021b/
Artist’s email thedra@thedra-art.com
PRINCE STREET GALLERY HOURS | Tuesday – Saturday 11AM – 6PM