First was the exhibition at the Christensen Center Gallery, titled "Pixel & Pen" and explaining itself as "an exhibit of digital art and process". This exhibit has a broad theme in that all the pieces were created by using digital elements. The featured works are a very eclectic collection and showcased the vastly different ways that digital and traditional artistry can blend together.
One work that I found in the exhibit at first did not appear to be digital art in any way. It is "Herbarium (Maidenhair Fern)" by Linda Gammell. It centered on what looked like a pressing or exceptional rendering of a flattened fern frond, and around the stem and behind the leaves were drawn circular designs, like mandalas. It reminded me of ancient scientific compendiums of plant life. Upon reading her artist statement, I learned that she had created this work while staying in the North Woods with a group of scientists and accompanying them on their excursions. The amazing detail is because the main image is from scanning a fern frond with a color scanner, and the results are amazing.
Another work that I really liked was "Portrait of Kitty" by Q. Cassetti. It is a very simple, yet very striking and poignant portrait. On a matte black background is layered a white silhouette of her hair and shirt, and the only color used is on her arms, casually crossed, and on her face, which stands out as simply but perfectly detailed with only the use of skin color, shadows, and eye color. Her gaze is direct and arresting, holding you softly. The farther away things are from her eyes, the less detail is involved; though the arms have color, they are also one-tonal silhouette images. The artist statement had some interesting anecdotes on the process in finding a individual "voice" or style in digital media, and how the person in the portrain was the artist's teenage daughter.
For more information about "Pixel & Pen", click here.
A little further down the street, we found the Gage Family Art Gallery, which is currently housing an installation, "Lucia Hwang: What's Up?". The exhibition is a four-part installation, including a chalk outline of a body, cordoned off by cones and police tape, that is clutching a purse and filled in with a designer motif; a wall of egg crates filled with eggs and outlined by moss, the egg crates featuring the same designer motif, and in front of it all, a rooster with sunglasses and a tiny designer purse slung around its body; a sparkling white toilet, behind which there is a pegboard with rolls of toilet paper attached, and on the floor, piled up and surrounding the toilet, are countless more rolls of toilet paper, and all the rolls are covered in the designer motif; and then a large plastic trash can, knocked over on its side with debris spilling out, the entire can covered in the same designer motif.
Lucia Hwang's message pertains to the relationship between the inner personal world and the outer, mass produced, materialistic world. She explores the conflict between one's inner emotions and individuality, and the material world, constantly assaulting what we hold inside. She terms the conflict in phrases of acceptance and rejection - how we accept that which comforts us and is in tune with our inner selves, and we reject the harsh material things that are forced upon us. Her installations probe the line between the two, and ideas about what happens when the line is blurred, when the two are melded and one cannot accept or reject.
I found the exhibition to be quite interesting. It was interesting to see how she illustrated her point with the objects she chose, and the installation fit in with the gallery space quite nicely. I would have personally used different objects to represent comfort and the inner world, but that really is one thing that changes from person to person.
To find out more about "What's Up?", click here.
Thank you for being my dear readers,
Catherine
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