Art in the Library: Sectio Aurea

I am primarily a digital 3D content creator which is entirely virtual but when it comes to working in physical mediums, I am much more an experimental artist. The creative experience for the collaborative piece was entirely new to me. I like to try techniques and mediums that I have never worked in before as I did here. For my section, I created plaster female form reaching up, dancing, and rejoicing as she expresses her thirst for knowledge in a library both verbally and symbolically by standing on an open book as the steady foundation of her goal.

Whites Only examines the memory of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era to interrogate the continued legacy of white supremacy. Through the usage of photography, sculpture, and installation, I distrupt past and the present to conflate experiences of racial oppression into a timeless paradigm. This experience implores the view to question their notions of a nation's progress beyond the horros of Jim Crow. Within the context of current resurgences in white supremacy and increased public brutality of minorities, this exhibition is a moment of reflection into how far we have come and how far we have gone back.

Although each panel has its own unique color, they are united in their fractal theme rendered in various textile techniques. The branching lines, familiar to us from trees and veins, can be seen everywhere from the macrocosmic of constellation clusters, to the microcosmic features of neural networks. Nor is it confined to the organic world, as the yellow panel demonstrates with electronic pathways in couched cording and embroidery, and an overhead view of city streets at night picked out in beading. It is my hope that the longer the viewer looks at each panel the more instances of these repeating patterns they will find in quilted butterfly wings, bleach-painted stars, and radial webs; from the intimately human to the infinitely universal.

Bought the Farm Series: 2019-present
Interlude- Learning to Care for Horses
The leg of a horse contains a multitude: life, knowledge, pain, suffering, wisdom, joy, grace, freedom, death, decay, fear, anxiety, mystery and magic. A library contains the same and perhaps a bit more.

The ephemera in this piece examines the precariousness of memory and the human impulse toward nostalgia. The end result is work that captures fleeting moments of discovery and realization through a combination of visual and tangible stimuli, inspiring a moment of awe and contemplation. This work represents the movement and migration of monarch butterflies and was inspired by the book “Flight Behavior” by Barbara Kingsolver. Sterling silver fins with burnished surfaces in various sizes and configurations provide a sense of motion and flux in direct contrast to specimens captured in glass. Through a process of placing, responding, fitting, and adjusting, a topography of fins and planes is revealed. The attention shifts from a static, emotionally based object to a fleeting moment that cannot be pinned down. Shadows are cast, and move with time or presentation of the work. Light pools, reflects, and highlights. All the while, crafted domes of color offer a place of peaceful rest and symmetry amidst a dynamic, moving environment.

This collaborative panel was created by Laura Oertel (Studio Art alumnus 2018, Working Artist Program participant 2018-2020), Riley Winkles (Studio Art 2021), Kerri Cushman, and Kelly Nelson (Professors of Art). Substrates were created using traditional handmade paper techniques with up-cycled cotton clothing. Alphabet letters, numbers, and symbols serve as integral components of communication reflecting library research. The panel’s surfaces were created using pyrography, letterpress printing, embossment, and laser cutting. The imagery depicts language, mathematics, and computer coding. Print media images reflect the importance of mass communication, and the information revolution born from moveable type.

Breathing Lines is a community-made painting where artistic ownership is distributed to a group of people, in this case, LCVA staff (Rachel Ivers, Alex Grabiec, Bev Roberts, Lucy Carson, Matt Keener, Emily Grabiec, Mack Lenhart, Stephen Marion). Echoing John Cage’s embrace of chance and Jiro Okura’s process of painting around stones, sticks, and leaves, the group took turns making long, undulating lines that were interrupted by these once natural objects. The process, lines, and spaces made consider the relationships between presence/absence and individual/community. Moreover, they suggest that seemingly opposite ideas don’t have to be entirely separate.

Prior to teaching, I was a Design Director for Time-Life Books. Time-Life was known for their richly illustrated publications. Designing illustrated books heightened my fondness of illustration. Before the internet, libraries were one of the few places one could find picture books. As a child I spent many hours in the local library. Books with words and pictures are a great example of the gestalt concept of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, as is this mural, done by several artists working on a part, not knowing what the whole would look like. For my part of the mural I chose to illustrate some scenes from my favorite books. My piece was executed in acrylic ink with brush and pen, and the words were cut from vinyl, adhered to the panel, and sealed with clear polymer glaze.