Mary Griep - Artist Talk Response

Mary Griep's Anastylosis is an architectural project in which Griep recreate the architectures of temples and churches on multiple panels using mixed media. The core idea of the project is to capture the current presentation of whichever temple or church being drawn. Since these temples and churches were built long time ago, they have been through series of renovation and destruction by either human or nature, which made them so different from how they were originally built. One method to preserve these medieval buildings is Anastylosis. Griep also included its definition in her artist statement for this project:

Anastylosis: A method of restoring a monument distinguished by often dismantling and, in theory, rebuilding the structure using the original methods and materials. 

Although these are drawings and mixed media that captured medieval buildings, Griep put a lot of her characteristics in these pieces. The first thing that came to my mind when I observed her artworks was: the amount of details she put in her artworks is very impressive! She also suggested that these pieces should be observed from the far first, to see the architectures as a whole, and then move closer to the piece to see the details. Her artworks remind me of those portraits composed of small blocks with colorful patterns. I also enjoy her use of different sizes of panels. She used multiple panels for one architecture, and each panel is proportional to the size of the part of the architecture that being drawn on that panel. This technique adds in another dimension for the art piece and can help the viewers visualize the relative size of the architecture.