Michele Pred "Rem(a)inders" October 2-26, 2004
"Rem(a)inders," refers to Michele Pred's preference for unconventional materials, as well as to memory of time and events. The artist creates sculptures of confiscated items from airport security checkpoints-scissors, pocketknives, clippers, or recycled objects such as cell phone chargers. Most of her material comes from San Francisco's International Airport, obtained and confiscated since 9/11/2001. Pred says of her raw materials, "the diverse array of assembled 'dangerous' items may be regarded as the cultural residue of a particular moment in history...each small tool, like each of us, bears some weight of a changed world." While Pred uses materials infused with personal history and memory, her works are universal in configuration. The circle is one of her preferred frameworks, along with the heart. Encirclement-a compilation of thousands of pairs of confiscated scissors, matches, knives-is a large ring, 6 feet in diameter, evoking a vulnerable time in recent history. The piling of objects begins with silver scissors on the bottom and continues to build with tension, energy, and emotion with colored scissors, matches, knives toward the top, the totality a shimmering ensemble quivers with pain, emotion, humor-this is Michele Pred's circle of life.
Signature for Pred is her American Flag, Homeland Security, composed of confiscated pocketknives. An icon image for Americans, Pred revisits the theme of the red, white and blue. With echoes of folk art on the one hand, and a sophisticated nod to other contemporary artist's renditions of the flag on the other, Pred's unique flag reverberates with associations. As with all of Pred's pieces, the pocketknives singly have little significance; placed together as an image they are charged with meaning.
Michele Pred's Berkeley studio is filled with boxes in which she sorts her materials. Scissors are sorted by color of handles, knives are placed together, and clippers with images are in one box, silver clippers in another. The raw materials, the artist's palette, await her conceptual approach. Red-handled scissors are put together to make a heart on the wall; each pair of scissors numbered for its place on the wall, giving the piece an archaeological aspect.
For her newest pieces, composed of recycled cell phone chargers, the artist did extensive research to glean a source, always an important aspect of the work for Pred-her intellectual curiosity sleuthing the most appropriate source. The chargers (either to be rebuilt for use in third world countries, or sent half way across the world to become landfill) are symbolic for Pred of universal connection. Sometimes the chargers are piled high in a "stack," curlicues of energy going nowhere, wound like intertwining snakes filled with conversations past. In one of her newest pieces the chargers are woven into a large empty nest form, reminding one of women's work through the centuries, knitting, weaving, the nest makers of humanity. Pred says of her cell phone charger pieces: "I work with man-made/manufactured items that are no longer in use, items that retain cultural significance despite having been removed from everyday life. They are symptomatic of our cultural wasteland, of the excesses and debris generation that drive our consumer culture."
Michele Pred was born in San Francisco of Swedish and American heritage. She received her B.F.A. with distinction from the California College of Arts and Crafts and a certificate in French Language from University of Sorbonne, France. She also attended San Francisco State University, California as a graduate student.
		Michele Pred's work has been shown at Arts Commission of Greater Toledo, Ohio; California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland; The Hearts in San Francisco Project, California; Millesgarden Museum, Sweden; Napa Valley College Art Gallery, California; San Francisco State University Gallery, California; Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, California. She was prizewinner at Close Pegase Winery, Sonoma and Sanchez Art Center, Oakland, California and was Designer of the first annual Webby Award, San Francisco.