If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds

'Wishes' - Kathleen O’Hara
'Wishes', Detail
'If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds' - Kathleen O’Hara
'If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds', 2019, mixed media wall installation, 89 1/8 x 83 1⁄2"
'If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds' - Kathleen O’Hara
'If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds', View 1, 2019, mixed media wall installation, 89 1/8 x 83 1⁄2"
'If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds' - Kathleen O’Hara
'If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds', 2019, mixed media wall installation, 89 1/8 x 83 1⁄2"
'If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds' - Kathleen O’Hara
'If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds', View 2, 2019, mixed media wall installation, 89 1/8 x 83 1⁄2"
'Wishes' - Kathleen O’Hara
'Wishes', Detail
'Wishes' - Kathleen O’Hara
'Wishes', Detail
'Wishes' - Kathleen O’Hara
'Wishes', Detail, 2019, mixed media on birch panels, 49/5 x 7” panels, 42 1⁄2 x 56 1/2"
'Book' - Kathleen O’Hara
'Book', Installation View 1
'If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds' (left), 'You’d Get a Giant Flock of Words' (right) - Kathleen O’Hara
'If Only My Wishes Could Fly Like Birds' (left), 'You’d Get a Giant Flock of Words' (right), 2018, glitter and ink on vintage paper, 9 1⁄2 x 11 3/8"
'Wishes' - Kathleen O’Hara
'Wishes', Detail

Statement

Kathleen O’Hara’s installation is a meditation on memory and the remnants of shared correspondence. Influenced by her family’s greeting card business, she transformed the Carole Calo Gallery into a homage to this history and the relics of civil communiqué. More than a sentimental remembrance, she takes the handicraft of pre-digital communication and created a new body of work that plays on her keen eye for design along with text and imagery, combined with uncanny allure. Inspired by her family’s vintage greeting card albums from the 1940’s, she plays with nostalgic materials such as contact paper, label makers, and stencils to source the deep psychology of longing and being understood.

O’Hara partly recreated the company’s 1970’s showroom in New York City with a large constructed wall featuring her handmade wallpaper, drawings using vintage card imagery, and inset framed works. Also included were a series of glitter Rorschach drawing/collages, and a grid of 5×7” text panels with phrases extracted from greeting card wishes. In the center of the gallery, one of the original vintage albums was displayed on a pedestal.

Candice Smith Corby
Artist
Director, Carole Calo Gallery, Stonehill College