lay down dream
Lay Down Dream (2006-ongoing) fiberglass resin, mattress spring and pigment
Lay Down Dream began in 2006 and is a dialogue between resin, rusted mattress springs, and pigment. A forgotten coil of metal, abandoned by the roadside, called out to Schwartz. She brought it home, resting beside it for five years until, one morning, it whispered: “fiberglass resin.” She didn’t know what it was, but followed the whisper, stepping into the alchemy of resin for the first time—a material she describes as a black art, mysterious and volatile. Light pools within it like liquid memory, and with pigment stirred in, it blooms with quiet revelations.
When the first piece was complete, it felt like opening a door to the past. The resin’s translucent layers echoed the view from beneath a childhood cot, where Schwartz lay with her dog, looking up through the lattice of springs, mesmerized by the soft drift of quilts and sheets above. This series carries the imprint of that dreamscape—rooted in the shadows beneath her mother’s piano, where color floated between tension and release, metal and fabric, light and breath.
In Lay Down Dream, Schwartz listens as much as she creates, attuned to the language of pigment, letting colors speak and settle into forms that honor their own resonance, like echoes pinned gently in place.
