Childhood memory is the generative locus for all of artist Martin Honert’s work, which explores the nature of memory itself and how ephemeral impressions are sustained over time. Group of Teachers, 2012, in Glenstone’s collection, is a sculptural composition based on a photograph from the artist’s early boarding school days in postwar West Germany. The work incorporates particles of sand and glass into layers of translucent polyurethane. Honert applied a muted palette to paint shadows from the original photograph onto the surface of the sculpture. The resulting image is neither fully recognizable nor completely distant, no more real or illusory than the memory Honert’s photograph purports to capture. Instead, the work points to the hovering, haunting way that memories burrow and lodge within us, potent yet elusive, impossible to fix in space or time.

–From the Glenstone Field Guide