Candace Karch turns cherished possessions into art

It's been a tough year for Candace (can-DAY-sa) Karch. Twice, misbehaving sprinkler systems flooded her Bambi Gallery in Northern Liberties, forcing her to close the beloved showcase for emerging artists.

After months of legal wrangling, the bank is throwing her out of her Fishtown home, and she must move her studio as well. Early last month, her back seized up so viciously that she couldn't stand or walk, causing her to miss work as a popular bartender at Johnny Brenda's tavern in Fishtown.

One could say it has been a time of radical transition for Karch, a time for closing one chapter and opening a new one, a time of downsizing and letting go.

"I've been reckoning with the stuff in my life, finally coming to terms with what I need and don't need," Karch says. "It's a process, often difficult and painful."

Recently, Karch held a yard sale, and the stuff no one wanted at day's end filled 10 boxes sent to a thrift shop. But this "borderline hoarder" could not purge everything. There were some items so personally precious, so laden with memory and sentiment, that she dared not part with them.

Several of those items appear in Karch's latest work of art, an installation appropriately titled "Hold: An Installation About the Desire to Keep Stuff," displayed Wednesday until Oct. 30 in the Hall of the Crane Arts Building, in the factory zone near Northern Liberties grandly dubbed "Olde Kensington."

It's a timely exhibition in an age when "stuff lust" is rampant, when consumerism is not only the engine of the economy but also our national pastime and religion, when television offers reality shows about hoarders, when people are renting space in proliferating storage centers to house the junk that no longer fits in their homes, attics, garages, and basements.

Karch, 43, is an artist whose primary medium is photography, so this installation is a departure. But the subject - the possessions that sometimes possess us - demands to be addressed in three dimensions. We're material beings living in a material world, and the things we acquire and cling to solidify such abstractions as our identity, our past, our aspirations.

"If I have nothing, how would I project myself?" Karch asks rhetorically. "We rely on stuff to present ourselves."

In simplest terms, the installation is "about keeping stuff and letting stuff go," Karch says.

"Everyone can relate to saving things and holding on to things," she elaborates. "Everyone has a collection of stuff and can relate to the regret of getting rid of something or wishing they had bought or kept something."

From her earliest years, Karch, who grew up in Huntingdon Valley, began saving stuff as "future art supplies." She did not collect, say, Barbie dolls, with the notion they would someday increase in value. Rather, she saved such things as meaningful scraps of paper, cherished toys, and souvenirs of unforgettable people and moments.

Karch had pondered such an installation for a couple of years, but last week, as the deadline approached for assembling it, she found herself improvising.

"This piece is happening in real time," she said. "It's alive, and I'm not sure what it will look like until it's all up and I have slept on it."

She envisions a simple, straightforward exhibition of 20 to 25 objects, each presented by a pair of gloves, representing outstretched offertory hands, the body parts with which we touch, grasp, and hold. Among the items:

A beach shovel given to her as a child by her parents. "I would not let go of it," Karch recalls. "Because it had eyes and a mouth, I thought it had feelings. We often anthropomorphize objects to give them life."

The false teeth of a beloved grandfather who had a big smile.

The 1977 lipstick imprint of her mother's kiss on a piece of paper, which Karch preserved in a glass jar.

Six rolls of undeveloped film from a 1990 trip to London with her mother and sister, containing unseen photographs whose spell is their mystery.

A cigarette butt that once touched the lips of Rafael Ravelo, the heartthrob from Aruba whom Karch met when she was 15 during a summer art program.

The bird swing of James the parakeet, a tough pet who survived 11 years. "After he passed away, my mother buried him in the backyard," Karch reports. "Omar, our cat, dug him up and left him in the kitchen the next day."

The intrinsic value of the items is paltry; their value to Karch, priceless.

"I'm celebrating things that make no sense to anyone else," Karch says. "No one can reproduce this installation because this is a collection of my things."

Among those eager to see the finished installation is John Margraff, 44, of Fairmount, who ran an art gallery in Santa Fe, N.M., for five years.

"When Candace told me she was doing this installation, it didn't surprise me," Margraff says, "because I know how she thinks about why she held onto her grandmother's purse or something she found in the street that touched her heart. That process of connecting emotionally with an object and being able to use it as a piece of art has been a consistent part of her personality for as along as I've known her."

While Karch recognizes the importance of things, she's also ambivalent. "Things can burden you," she says. "They can clutter your brain." Her installation does not chastise or condemn. Rather, it's an exploration, designed to stimulate questions and provoke thought.

"I'm not judging people on why or what they want to keep. They're probably holding on to stuff for the same reason I wanted to keep my toy shovel - because it makes me feel good and I care about it.

"My hope is that viewers will share stories about what they have kept and think about all the things they have and the objects they've held onto for so long. Are they happy? Do they have any regrets?"

See a video of Candace Karch's "Hold" installation at www.philly.com/holdEndText

Exhibition

Hold: An Installation About

the Desire to Keep Stuff

Opens Wednesday, to Oct. 30, Crane Arts Building, 1400 N. American St.

Open Wednesday to Oct. 30 at the Hall of the Crane Arts Building, 1400 N. American St. Second Thursday receptions 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday and Oct. 13. Presented by the artists' cooperative InLiquid Art & Design. Hours are noon to 6 p.m. Wednesdays to Sundays and until 9 p.m. on Second Thursday. Information: 215-235-3405, http://inliquid.org.

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