What objects give meaning to our lives? Kerianne Quick, artist in residence at San Diego’s New Americans Museum, spent a year researching people’s treasured possessions -- and the stories behind them -- for an innovative project in which she preserves them as 3-D laser art. KPBS reporter Maya Trabulsi reports on the exhibit “A Portrait of People in Motion.”
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Judy Woodruff:
What objects give meaning to our lives?
KPBS reporter Maya Trabulsi talked to an artist who gathered things special to San Diego residents and preserved them as 3-D laser art.
It is part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.
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Maya Trabulsi:
When you walk into the New Americans Museum, you may wonder where the art exhibit is. But if you look closer, you will see a pen knife, a bell, a figurine. And if you look even closer, you will learn about the stories embedded in these objects.
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Kerianne Quick:
Each one of these individual stories come together as a chorus, in my view.
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Maya Trabulsi:
Kerianne Quick is the artist in residence here.
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Kerianne Quick:
When you start with something specific, something completely surprising can unfold, something you never would have access to otherwise.
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Maya Trabulsi:
Something specific like a typewriter?
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Kerianne Quick:
Like a typewriter, yes, yes.
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Maya Trabulsi:
For her exhibit called A Portrait of People in Motion, she spent over a year gathering treasured objects from San Diego residents. But, more importantly, she gathered the stories that accompany them.
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Kerianne Quick:
If we can feel some of that emotion about what it's like to try to figure out how to live in a new place, then maybe we can empathize with those who are experiencing the most extreme version of that discomfort.
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Maya Trabulsi:
The item is scanned, and then 3-D printed or laser engraved to leave behind what Kerianne calls a ghost, transparent, with faint detail, yet still teeming with the story of how it came to San Diego.
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Kerianne Quick:
The story is the art piece. The objects that are represented here, they're just a way in to those stories. And, yes, the objects are transparent. And that's on purpose.
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Maya Trabulsi:
Some objects are made of clear resin. Others are acrylic.
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Kerianne Quick:
The light as it projects through the laser-engraved surface, it creates a shadow where the writing almost becomes legible.
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Maya Trabulsi:
At first glance, they are hard to see against the stark white wooden furniture designed to look like furniture in a home. But looking closer is exactly what Kerianne wants you to do.
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Kerianne Quick:
And when they look closer, and they wonder what that — what the thing is that they're looking at, they are given access to the story that is behind it.
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Maya Trabulsi:
Kerianne also recorded the oral histories of each piece. They can be played by dialing a number on your phone and then the corresponding number of the item.
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Man:
My object is a jacket that, when I was in Korea during the Korean War, this was a jacket that I, in effect, stole from the Army.
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Woman:
From 1971 to now, we have lived many places, and the recipes have gone with me.
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Woman:
My object is a little tiny Inuit figure that was given to me in 1945 by my first boyfriend, who was stationed in the Aleutians.
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Woman:
And I think just seeing it makes me feel at home, because I grew up seeing it.
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Kerianne Quick:
The crux of what I'm trying to do here is to help people, people in general, feel something that might make them treat their neighbor a little bit better.
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Maya Trabulsi:
And as the sound of plane engines roar above this little museum under the San Diego flight path, it offers a subtle reminder that we are all people in motion.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Maya Trabulsi in San Diego.
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