You Will Always Have A Place At My Table
Statement
My art installation, You Will Always Have A Place at My Table, is a collection of representational kinetic dining objects, accented by a woven table runner, situated on and grounded by a mahogany dining table. These objects are inspired by familiar forms and aristocratic dining practices, intended as an invitation to reflect on familial memories and build new connections around the dining table. By referencing traditional and familiar cooking and dining forms, such as a teapot or a whisk, I hope to invite my viewers to connect with my work by eliciting memories associated with these recognizable forms. I use a combination of mix metals, cord, wood, and enamel to create the interactive, puzzle-like pieces as an avenue to make sitting around the table enjoyable and inviting. Upon reflection of my designs and artistic style, I have come to appreciate that I use mechanical movements in my work as a method of conveying complex ideas. As an artist with learning disabilities, this body of work reflects how I learn about and experience the world around me. It exemplifies my desire to connect sensory experiences with my memories of time spent around the dining table.
Thesis Paper
Abstract
It’s time to eat is a simple phrase that holds a privileged comfort for satisfying hunger and a time for bonding, gathering, and reflecting. I write these words as I make homemade cavatelli pasta in my parents’ kitchen; the flour has specked the computer screen, my clothes, and floor. The enjoyment of rolling the dough to make these small, ribbed delights will last several meals as it is dried, then frozen, to be later taken out and enjoyed again. These same notions of blissful family memories enter my smithed objects. My art series, “You Will Always Have a Place at My Table,” is a collection of one-of-a-kind, sensory-provoking cooking and serving tools inspired by my childhood memories of family dinner time. My thesis is influenced by Western 18th and 19th Century elaborate tableware that curate a landscape of personal identity rooted within objects, and traditions derived from rituals. Aristocratic dining slowed down the eating process to allow for establishing connections between the guests as the meal was intended to be long lasting with appreciation for the food and tradition. Like an event-filled dinner party from the past with consideration for etiquette and culture, a DelBrocco family dinner is filled with the sounds of vocal communication, the clattering of kitchen tools, and lively music in the background. Meanwhile, preparation is like a series of systematic gears operating in harmony as the meal unfolds. Like the many objects we assign a value, my art, while on display will absorb and collect the numerous fruitful memories spent at the table. Welcome to my table.