Marie Shelley's drawings of abandoned buildings address memory and the passage of time. The artist's process starts with solvent transfers of old antique photographs, over which she draws an abandoned space in pen and ink. The photograph blends into the drawing, and becomes a part of the texture of the walls and the landscape.
The juxtaposition of the urban building and the old photo reminds the viewer that the land the structure stands on used to be open space or farmland. The only human figures, or signs of humanity, in the drawings come from the photo transfers. The buildings look empty, but are full of feeling and emotion. 'The future looks bleak,' they say, 'but something of us will always remain.' Marie Shelley is a recent graduate from Lewis and Clark College, in Portland, Oregon. She is a member of the local artist group Slack Collective. Her work has been exhibited in the Pacific Northwest and the Bay Area.