‘What Remains…’ 
Mixed media installation
2002
Dimensions variable

Details…
• 20 child-sized desks and chairs – 11 are ‘normal’, 9 are altered
• Books and pencils encrusted with marble dust and white sand
• Fluorescent lighting creates directional lighting from the ‘blackboard’
• White erasers and chalk rest on a ‘blackboard’ tray
• 8 prints of second grade school pictures – marble dust and white sand on vellum
• 30′ x 40′ as installed in Provincetown

Notes
In 2001 I won 1st prize in the Provincetown Art Association and Museum’s Annual Invitational Exhibition. As a result, I was offered a solo exhibition in a large museum gallery. ‘What Remains…’ was created for that space. 

At its core, this piece is about retrieving a moment in time and examining the evidence around an event that changed the fabric of who I was at the time.

At this moment in Sr. Mary Oliver’s second grade class, I was humiliated for not coming up with the precise answer the nun expected. Standing at my desk while others sat, I made an unconscious decision that it was more beneficial to disappear than it was to stand out – to seek out what I was supposed to think rather than think myself – a crushing decision for a young artist. In creating this piece I am reclaiming that act, honoring it and reversing it.

The timing of this piece was eerie. The opening was two weeks after the exposure of the priests of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse of children in Boston. This unrelated all consuming story spilled into the gallery heightening the artwork’s impact for viewers. It magnified the inability of children to remove themselves from harm. Whether it is a vindictive teacher, classmate bullies, or unwanted attention from overly friendly priests, there is no escaping the second grade.

At the talk and at the opening, people were bursting with their elementary school experiences. Each choosing the desk that was ‘theirs’, suppressed memories tumbled out about their young minds grappling with fending for themselves for the first time in a new environment and the realization that their participation was mandatory. 

I am honored to have touched on something so universal from a deeply personal memory. It is my hope that this piece will continue to spark memories, dialogue and change.

Julie Levesque