artist statement

Times of ruins. Times of resiliency.

My work is a response to ruins we experience both collectively and individually. I investigate how identities are formed and morphed through the cultural and historical moments of our lives. I work with an aesthetics of ruins—eroded structures, traces and imprints of time, text under erasure—to consider what we hold onto amidst the fragments and complexities of contemporary chaos. I bundle, collage, collect, research, write, erase, excavate, construct, deconstruct and reconstruct in my art practice. I manipulate materials to present sediments of time and sediments of thinking on loss, longing, transformation and renewal.

I ask how we move forward.

bio

An interdisciplinary artist in the Boston area, Carolyn Sirois creates works on canvas, paper and makes objects. Using a range of materials -- cement, book pages, found text, newspaper, vintage books, fabric, thread, tape, twine, ink, graphite, acrylic, house paint, weathered wood, flashing, radiator covers, assorted debris, dried fruit, dried plants, branches, moss, cardboard — she erases, embeds and reconfigures.

Carolyn’s art practice and teaching practice (instructor of writing) inform each other. As a Lecturer of English at Northeastern University, she teaches Advanced Writing in the Disciplines for Arts, Media & Design, Interdisciplinary Advanced Writing in the Disciplines, First-Year Writing and First-Year Writing for Multi-Lingual Writers. Carolyn has also been adjunct faculty at the SMFA/School of Museum of Fine Arts (now SMFA at Tufts), Berklee College of Music, and the Boston Architectural College.

Over the years she has exhibited her art in Boston, Cambridge, the North Shore, Martha’s Vineyard, New Hampshire and Maine. Carolyn’s artwork is in private collections in New England, Florida, Washington D. C., Ottawa, Bangkok and Rome. 

Carolyn is a graduate of the School of Museum of Fine Arts (Diploma /1992, Fifth Year/2002) and received her MFA in Visual Arts (2019) from Lesley University College of Art & Design. 

cmsirois31@gmail.com

Instagram: @caro_siro