Aislinn McNamara

About

I will never forget the first time I visited Aislinn’s studio.
Her studio walls were deep green. The green reminded me of Evergreen wood.
Evergreen is a familiar color to me because I come from Hokkaido, Japan, and Hokkaido has beautiful evergreen trees like in Scandinavia. But, I believe Scotland’s or Ireland’s evergreens must be the best rich deep green. There were her blown sculptures on the green wall. The sculptures have holes. I was tempted to jump into those brown holes. What a great experience I had in her studio.

Thirty years ago, the first time I visited the Picasso Museum in Paris, the building seemed to me just an ordinary mansion. At the entrance, I found the stairs and a high ceiling. The high ceiling had a rustic ironwork chandelier; my professor told me that it was Albert Giacometti’s brother, Diego Giacometti’s work. When the door was open, it was because Picasso’s cat sculpture was sitting there as a door stopper. It was super charming. But now, Picasso’s museum in Paris has renewed itself into a white museum with a stylish doorman standing by the door. Where has that cat sculpture gone?

Nowadays, every museum has become similarly white-walled with cheap materials. The style looks the same as commercial galleries, so it is easy to change with the installations.

I can’t say that I like Renzo Piano because he has decorated almost all museums like shiny white cubes with no character and no blood. They are made for “style”. It’s easy that all the walls are white.

However, as much as I love the Metropolitan Museum in NYC, I also love Tate Britain. The walls have strong colors, yet, this makes the artworks stronger, emphasized by the background.

If all walls end up white, William Morris’s beautiful wallpapers will be framed and shown on a white wall, which doesn’t make sense.

I very much enjoyed and was excited to visit Aislinn’s studio; seeing her playful artworks and the world she made that belongs to her soul.

I hope 3A Gallery can represent Aislinn’s art as it was in the world of her studio. The many holes of her sculptures might be inhaling you, or groundhogs will be jumping up from those holes, so you must be careful.