CAROLE TURBIN.  374 11th St. Brooklyn, NY 11215.  718: 499-3244  c.turbin@earthlink.net

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Biographical Entry

My tonal drawings and lithographs combine precise representation of everyday objects and environments with expressions of mood and psychological meaning. The subjects I deal with are household interiors and urban scenes that convey multiple levels of meaning about daily life, some apparent and some beneath the surface. Sofas express comfort and calm in a familiar environment but also have a sense of unease and forbidding. I heighten drama by depicting objects close up, emphasizing large abstract shapes, and contrasting lit surfaces with deep shadows. While there are no human figures, there is often the sense of an unseen observer who has just inhabited the scene or will soon appear. Sinks are bathed in light revealing surfaces of porcelain with metal faucets while pipes beneath are in shadow and connected to hidden areas behind walls and in basements. My sinks, pipes, and water towers are analogous to human bodies with internal plumbing; pipes are conduits of necessary fluid and waste and their operation cannot be consciously controlled. In my work, plumbing is a metaphor for much that goes on within our physical bodies and psyches, seen and unseen, felt and unfelt, efficient and problematic.

I like the immediacy of tactile media: the expressive darks of charcoal, the sensation of lithographic crayon on stone, the fluidity of ink wash, the smooth surface of wax. Some images of sinks and plumbing are rendered in a wax resist technique combining paraffin, waterproof ink wash, compressed charcoal, and conte crayon. For tonal images, I do lithographic prints or use charcoal pencil on wove paper conveying the immediacy of surface textures, wool and velour fabric, firm wood, and interior walls. My use of black and white tones evokes old photographs, cinema, and a remembered past. I am interested in the objects themselves and in inviting observers to create color and meaning in their minds, much as readers of books imagine scenes painted by words and make them their own.

In my previous career as an academic social historian, my subject was also everyday life. For thirty-odd years, my research, publications, and teaching centered on shedding new light on aspects of daily life that are taken-for-granted and thus often unnoticed and unexplored. My special concern was the history of women’s household and workplace experience, and later the history of ordinary men’s and women’s dress in public and private settings. As an artist I continue to explore ordinary objects and environments whose meanings are often hidden beneath the surface.

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