Studio Art

Community, Communication, and Presentation: In the Field with Hannah Cressy ’13

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Hannah Cressy ’13 continues her report on the service learning factor of Wesleyan’s interdisciplinary course Ritual, Health, and Healing.

Sonya Freeman '12 has tea with Professor Jill Sigman's father.

Sunday, April 22 was our last in Brooklyn, and the culmination of all the conversations, tours, library research, video editing, and personal interviews we’ve conducted over the past month.  We’ve been traveling to Greenpoint-Williamsburg nearly every weekend in April to the Arts@Renaissance space of St. Nick’s Alliance to learn about the area from locals. We developed projects to document the neighborhood’s rich history and bring awareness to issues of trash distribution, educational equality, pollution, health, and space preservation.  Our goal for Sunday was to present our findings to members of this community and to talk with them about their viewpoints on these issues, and we are very happy that the weekend succeeded in promoting neighborhood communication, honoring long-time local activists, and beginning plans for our professor Jill Sigman’s upcoming project in Arts@Renaissance.

We spent Saturday finishing up and rehearsing our presentations, and were happy to get a taste of the local food scene in Williamsburg!  Our class has grown very close since January, as we meet two to three times per week; the same can be said for our relationships with both of our professors.  We’ve been very lucky to spend weekends with Gillian and Jill outside the classroom environment; hierarchal boundaries dissolve and a more egalitarian group-consciousness arises when working on real-world projects such as ours.

A lifelong Greenpoint resident shows Haley Perkins '13 her childhood home on a map.

On Sunday, we invited anyone living in Greenpoint-Williamsburg to stop by Arts@Renaissance during the afternoon to hear about our projects and to join in a community discussion.  We were a little nervous and very excited to see the final products of our classmates’ hard work.  There was no need to worry; the room
was full of community members the entire afternoon, ranging from their 20s to their 80s, both lifelong Greenpoint residents and new transplants.  The afternoon began with a witty ukelele performace from a former Ms. Greenpoint, who sang of public bath houses, Brooklyn’s trash issues, and the Exxon oil spill.  Then we moved into student presentations.  Several of my classmates made an incredible short film to document the overwhelming number of open-air trash dumps in Williamsburg and locals’ accounts of their asthmatic effects; another group created a walking tour past these transfer stations.  Another group focused on the inequality and self-confidence issues that arise with charter school invasion, and my group led attendees through a short history of the hospital complex that now houses St. Nick’s.  Interactive stations around the room allowed community members to draw their memorable neighborhood places on a big map, to look through news archives, or to listen to interviews with local members of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women.  The afternoon was a fantastic break from the chaos of everyday life for everyone involved; we gave ourselves time to reflect, connect, plan, and learn about each other.

Charlotte Heyrman '13 and Jesse Jacobson '12 talk with community members.

It is this separation from the ordinary that allows a ritual, and its subsequent changes in consciousness or action, to occur.  What we’ve learned in this class is that one need not travel abroad or join a religion to participate in ritual since we do it all the time.  The next part of the afternoon employed a ritual familiar to most of us: that of serving tea.  Jill, one of our professors, has built six “huts” around the world, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts; in preparation for hut #7, she set up a tape scaffold on its upcoming site, and prepared tea in the center made with herbs grown in a nearby urban garden.  We sat in a circle on her handmade T-shirt pillows and invited attending community members to join us in one-on-one conversations about their visions for the hut and opinions about pollution and garbage in the area.  I was surprised and enlivened by the openness of every attendee to our project.  Eighty-five year old men sat down on floor pillows and drew on small squares of paper, imagining what this hut will look like.  Tea continued for an hour or so, biscotti and fresh bread were passed around, and we “talked trash”.

By the end of the day, nearly everyone who’d shown up was still there, talking with neighbors or with us,
listening to interviews, or marking their childhood homes on the map.  The hut scaffolding was covered with clothespins holding pieces of paper; people had drawn ideas for the hut or written down which items of trash should be included.  We were exhausted from the weekend, but so thankful for the community members’ participation and fantastic ideas.  Though our Brooklyn trips have ended, we’re continuing to finish up our projects here at Wesleyan and will have final products ready in several weeks!

Rebecca Seidel ’15 reviews Paula Matthusen’s “work divided by time” (May 2-13)

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Rebecca Seidel ’15 reflects on her visit to “work divided by time,” a sound installation by Assistant Professor of Music Paula Matthusen, on display in Van Vleck Observatory through Sunday, May 13, 2012.

Energy. Power. Work. Time. We use these words rather casually in everyday conversation.  But when we delve deeper into these theoretically simple terms, we begin to realize the depth of their meaning.  The concepts of work and time carry an endless variety of historical and cultural contexts; they mark a place where science and culture merge.

work divided by time, Assistant Professor of Music Paula Matthusen’s new sound installation at the Van Vleck Observatory, reflects and renews these ideas.  The installation quite literally echoes a historical conception of time in a way that is simple yet evocative.

Dr. Matthusen’s work on this piece was inspired by a visit to the small town of Spillville, Iowa, where Frank and Joseph Bily spent all their lives constructing huge mechanical clocks.  The clocks, now on display at the Bily Clocks Museum in Spillville, feature intricate visual designs and moving figurines – as well as the captivating sounds of chimes and music boxes.  work divided by time takes sonic recordings of the Westminster Clock, one of the Bily Brothers’ first clocks, and manifests them using simple electric circuits.

A visit to the installation will bring you to a tiny room, surrounded by faint tones and snippets of static, bathed in the meditative heat and glow of candles.  The candles sit atop small handmade wooden boxes embellished with rosette patterns, from which the tones of the clock emerge.  Above each box and set of candles is a rotating propeller, powered by the heat of the candles.  If you lean in close, you’ll see that each setup forms its own little circuit – its own microcosm of energy.

“As the propellers turn on the modules, certain blades dip lower than others, at times intersecting with a wire that closes a circuit, allowing an audible tone to emerge, as well as a grit of noise as the connection is made and then re-broken,” Dr. Matthusen explained.  “Small rhythms emerge as the blades move at different rates, and gradually slow down and/or stop alltogether.”

Certain propellers do indeed slow to a halt occasionally, though a light tap will get them moving again.  You never know what patterns of sound will result – a factor which adds an intriguing layer of unpredictability to a space that is visually balanced and uniform.  The simplicity of the installation’s design makes all the small nuances of sound spring to life.

The mechanisms of work divided by time were constructed mostly by hand, recalling the innovation and technical skill with which the Bily Brothers fashioned their clocks in the early 20th century.   The brothers never once strayed further than 13 miles from their hometown – yet their clocks display an incredible level of worldliness and a boundless spirit for adventure.  The clocks are huge and majestic, some reaching over nine feet in height.  The setup of work divided by time is nowhere near as grandiose – quite to the contrary, its beauty arises from its conceptual simplicity and the subtlety of the sounds it produces.  The installation evokes the time and energy put into Frank and Joseph’s creations, while also transforming their legacy into something entirely new.

In a speech at the installation’s opening reception, Dr. Matthusen talked about her experience at the Bily Clocks Museum, and how it shaped her ideas for work divided by time:

“When I was first there, I heard the audience gasp as the music box gears engaged, and figurines began to rotate through the intricate mechanisms of the clocks.  I heard expressions – and certainly thought them myself – ‘I can’t believe the amount of work that went into that’ or ‘I can’t imagine the amount of time it would take to build that.’  Part of what is intriguing about these reactions are the very general concepts we’re accustomed to throwing around – ‘work’ and ‘time’ (perhaps in having too much of the former and not enough of the latter) – and in the work of the Bily Brothers, we encounter a world that has a radically different relationship to both.”

The installation stands alone as an immersive soundscape and physical space, but having this sense of its background makes the experience more meaningful. Because of the room’s small size, only a few people can step inside at a time.  This ends up enhancing the experience, allowing visitors to really settle into the space and the sounds – as well as the occasional lapse of silence.

work divided by time was commissioned by the Center for the Arts as a part of the ongoing project Feet to the Fire: Fueling the Future.  As Dr. Matthusen pointed out, this installation has “the unique status of being the first Feet to the Fire commission to use actual fire.”  It’s also the first sound installation of its kind to ever be set up in the Van Vleck Observatory.

But work divided by time is memorable beyond these standout details.  It infuses meaning into simple circuitry, in a way that is quietly powerful (no pun intended).

The installation is open every afternoon through Sunday, May 13, 2012.  You can see the exact hours here.

Sarah Wolfe ’12 previews “Junk Redemption” by Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14

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Sarah Wolfe ’12 interviews Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14 about her upcoming play “Junk Redemption,” opening this Friday, May 11 through Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 8pm, in front of the Whisper Wall (on Washington Terrace).

This weekend Second Stage is presenting a new play, written and directed by Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14. The play, Junk Redemption, goes up Friday through Sunday at 8pm in front of the Whisper Wall (located on Washington Terrace) in the Center for the Arts. Earlier this week I sat down with the student playwright to discuss the play, the process, and her aspirations as a playwright. The process of writing the play began in her Intermediate Playwriting class as an exercise in character driven playwriting, which was a new experience for Ms. Sanchez-Eppler. But as the writing process continued, Ms. Sanchez-Eppler found that historical facts from her own family history had trickled into the piece.

“It wasn’t until after the play was pretty much done and I was just editing it that I realized how much it relates to everything my grandmother has done in her life.”

The play follows the life of an isolated artist as she is discovered by a Baltimore gallery. Flashbacks narrate the story of why the artist began her work of creating sculptures out of available junk. Ms. Sanchez-Eppler calls the play “an homage” to her grandmother, who is currently suffering through the early stages of dementia.

“[My grandmother] was a social worker, and that’s a pretty big aspect of the show, and she was a tour guide in the New York Folk Art Museum for a very long time. She’s one of the most imaginative people I know. I love being around her because it is necessary for me to have an immediacy to my interactions with her. It requires a presence of being and a presence of mind and not much concern for referencing anything in the past.”

Ms. Sanchez-Eppler notes that she is someone who tries to find all of the interesting places on the Wesleyan campus, which is why Junk Redemption is not going up in a more traditional theatrical setting. The Whisper Wall, on the back side of the CFA facing Washington Terrace, is an interesting, if little known, architectural structure of the CFA. From the outside it is a semi-circle of concrete with a tree in the middle, but if one person stands inside the wall and whispers, the sound resonates so that a person standing on the other side can hear every word perfectly. Aside from this semi-magical feature, which is impossible to feature in a theatrical production, Ms. Sanchez-Eppler still felt something appropriate about the space for this particular production.

“It feels like you’ve entered this other world. It doesn’t feel like Wesleyan when you’re in that sort of enclosure, that semi-circle. The set required a tree and there was a tree there. It provides a natural stage.”

Ms. Sanchez-Eppler is a first time director, and spoke to the challenges of directing her own piece, which is what most student playwrights must do in order to show their work.

“I was lucky enough in high school to have one of my plays I wrote then directed, and it was really nice to push the bird out of the nest and just have it happen without me being there. I’d love for people to want to direct shows of mine. That would be dreamy.”

However, as she moves forward at Wesleyan, she is particularly interested in collaborative theater making. She cited Augusto Boal and The Medea Project as particular examples of theater that inspires her. Both tie into another focus of Ms. Sanchez-Eppler’s: work that is done creatively around prison reform. She has worked closely through her time here with Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins, whose classes bring students to local prisons to learn and teach about social activism through theater. She hopes to continue to have chances to learn about and create collaborative and empowering theater in her time at Wesleyan and after.

Come see Junk Redemption this weekend! The show is free and unticketed, so show up at 8pm at the Whispering Wall on Washington Terrace. Don’t miss this wonderful example of student creativity at Wesleyan!

Sarah Wolfe ’12 reflects on “The Big Draw: Middletown”

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Sarah Wolfe ’12 reflects on “The Big Draw: Middletown”, a public art event hosted by the Friends of the Davison Art Center.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the Friends of the Davison Art Center put together The Big Draw: Middletown this past Sunday. The event was intended to celebrate the art of drawing in its many forms and was a unique opportunity for drawers of all ages and skill levels to try their hand at different techniques for free!

Tableaux vivants. Image by Nam Anh Ta '12.

I had the pleasure of being a member of the student staff for the event. Tired and unhappy about the wet and dreary weather, I trudged over to the Davison Art Center Sunday morning to learn exactly what I would be doing. My attitude almost immediately improved as I watched about 15 Middletown High School students parade around the historic rooms of Davison dressed in costumes ranging from My Fair Lady to Pride and Prejudice to Kiss Me, Kate! That particular workshop, called “Tableaux Vivants” was organized by the students, who were members of the Middletown High School Art Club, provided an opportunity for participants to draw the costumed students in their historic setting.

I was placed at the Earth Day Collaborative Mural Project station. Stationed in the Art Workshops Lobby, I watched drawers aged 3 to 40 come and contribute a drawing of what they thought represented Earth Day on a huge piece of white paper on the wall. (“Go ahead, kids, you can actually draw on the walls today!”) The drawing skills ranged widely, as did the subject matter, the attention span, and the colors used. But by the end of the day, all of the staff was impressed by the beauty of what had been created with so many hands.

Earth Day Collaborative Mural Project. Image by Nam Anh Ta '12.

Nearby was the Scavenger Hunt, one of the activities that would have benefited from warmer, dryer weather. However, many families and students picked up a booklet to save for a later day. The hunt, entirely student designed, was a booklet of twelve different drawing challenges, ranging from: “Find a surface in nature with texture. What does it feel like? Make a rubbing of it by placing this page over and rubbing the side of your pencil on top” to “Draw a tree or a flower you see without looking at your page and without lifting your pencil.” Though there were some young boys who were disappointed with the lack of prizes involved with this particular scavenger hunt, most participants were excited to save it for a day they could do it outside.

Down the hall from where I was stationed was the Model Marathon, where supplies and a nude model were provided for participants to do some figure drawing. This was one of the most popular workshops in the event as it was a phenomenal opportunity for practice figure drawing without having to pay for a class.

These were only four of the ten workshops that were available for free to anyone who came and registered. Despite the grey weather, the turnout was good, and it was wonderful to see such a mix of Wesleyan students and outside community members participating in the joy of putting pencil/charcoal/marker to paper. There are plans to continue and grow the event, and I hope to see it become even more popular in the years to come.

Feet to the Fire Commissions by Sam Long ’12 (Mar. 31) & Ethan Cohen ’13 (Apr. 14-22)

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Sewon Kang ’14 talks about student commissioned works by Sam Long ’12 (March 31) and Ethan Cohen ’13 (April 14-22).   

The Center for the Arts Creative Campus Initiative is proud to present two student commissioned works that address the ever-growing challenge of environmentalism in exciting new blends of art and science. These student commissions are part of Feet to the Fire programming, a major undertaking on Wesleyan’s campus to examine critical environmental issues through art and science.

At 2pm on Saturday, March 31, 2012 in Memorial Chapel, Sam Long ’12 will perform his senior thesis project, which combines environmental studies and music in a special collaborative performance inspired by the Connecticut River, one of Middletown’s most spectacular local resources. The performers call themselves The Honey and the Sting and will play all original music on a stage powered by students on bicycle energy generators. Celebrating what the earth provides without contributing negatively to the problem, such a performance has never been attempted at Wesleyan before.

Scoreboard is an installation by Ethan Cohen ’13 that brings together the romanticized American image and the aesthetic of energy efficiency. It replicates the “home” score, an isolated section of the standard football scoreboard, first using traditional incandescent light bulbs. This ideal is then contrasted with a version of the same board that utilizes more energy-efficient fluorescent light bulbs. The comparison of the two nearly identical boards side by side challenges viewers to decide for themselves whether or not the soul of an object can be retained in energy efficient form. Scoreboard will be installed in the Science Library during Wesleyan’s Earth Week Celebration – Saturday, April 14 through Sunday, April 22, 2012.

Swerved to host ‘Alumni in the Arts’ panel and discussion on March 31

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On Saturday, March 31, Swerved will be hosting an “Alumni in the Arts” panel and discussion. Alumni in the panel will include:

Katie Gavriel ’09 – publication

Nathan Rich ’02 – architect

Andy Vernon Jones ’05 – photographer

Jessica Shaefer ’03 – Director of Communications at Creative Time

Ashley May ’07 – multimedia artist

So come to Albritton 311 from 4:30 to 6, this upcoming Saturday!

Swerved Installation in Usdan through April 19

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Swerved invites you to a display of Wesleyan student artwork, on display in Usdan until Thursday, April 19, 2012. There will be a selection of 3D and 2D pieces, curated entirely by Wesleyan students. Swerved is an organization that seeks to promote and display all manner of artwork from Wesleyan students. Their website serves as an excellent repository of submissions, displaying the many outlets of Wesleyan creativity. Here is a list of the student artists and their pieces.

Nick Kokkinis ’13

Untitled, Polyester blanket, canvas, wood, and hardboard
Cora Engelbrecht ’12
Untitled
Monoprint
Ariana Todd ’14
Growth, Digital Photograph
Aaron Forbath ’12
Master Bedroom, Princeton, NJ, Digital Photograph
Harry Hanson ’12
Emily, Digital Photograph
Max Skelton ’12
Untitled, Woodblock Print
Gabe Gordon, ’15
Lost at Sea, Oil on Canvas
Timmy Lee ’12
Amethyst, Oil on Canvas
Alex Chaves ’12
Untitled, Oil Pastel, Watercolor, and Charcoal on Paper
Wyatt Hodgson ’14
It’s Complicated, Technology
DonChristian Jones ’12
Untitled, Oil on Canvas
Brittni Zotos ’12
Untitled, Etching

Swerved also has released a mixtape available on Soundcloud, made up of songs from Wesleyan student musicians. Artists and groups include Sankofa, The Appledaughters, Robert Don ’15, Milo Grey, Faith Harding ’14, Kilbourne, Cybergiga, Khari, Don Jones, and Alaska Chip.

Shira Engel ’14 previews the Middletown Public Schools Art Exhibition (Mar. 10-18)

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Shira Engel ’14 contemplates the upcoming Middletown Public Schools Art Exhibition, opening March 10.

Twice a week, I foray off campus to the Woodrow Wilson Middle School as part of the student-run community partnership between Wesleyan and the full-time residents of Middletown. Wesleyan is replete with a plethora of programs that serve as points of connection between neighbors, creating pores in a much-talked-about campus bubble. These programs involve tutoring, among them WesReads/WesMath, Woodrow Wilson, and Traverse Square. They also inherently involve the arts, either implicitly through the tutoring programs, or explicitly through the work students from kindergarten to high school ages do through facilities like Green Street, Buttonwood Tree, and Oddfellows Playhouse.

I knew about a lot of these programs and venues before my time at Woodrow Wilson, but one of my tutees has enlightened me further with his firsthand account of all they have to offer. The first thing he told me when I said I went to Wesleyan was that he loves going to dance performances in the Center for the Arts. Creativity served as a perfect and much-needed icebreaker for our first session. Creativity is a link between our different lives and age groups.

This week, after talking to my tutee about dance at Wesleyan, I returned my “Wesleyan Tutor” badge to the main office only to see a poster for a Middletown Youth Arts Exhibit, which, come Saturday March 10, will be held at the CFA’s very own Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.

Right when Wesleyan students go on spring break, Middletown kids will take over the CFA with their original art, claiming their rightful place in Wesleyan creative life, which is representative not just of this campus, but of the greater world. It is a true creative collaboration between the schools and Wesleyan University.

So, if you happen to be hanging around campus an extra day and can free up an hour from your thesis work or whatever may have you chilling here, come check out this talent! At 5pm on Saturday, March 10 is a free opening reception for the exhibit, which is sponsored by the Middletown Board of Education, Middletown Public Schools Cultural Council and Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts. Come support your neighbors through the common bond of creativity.

The exhibition will be open from Saturday, March 10 to Sunday, March 18 at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, noon to 7pm and Saturday & Sunday, 1pm to 4pm. The opening reception will held from 5pm to 7pm on March 1o. Admission is free.

Rebecca Seidel ’15 reviews David Schorr’s “APOTHECARY” (through Mar. 8)

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Rebecca Seidel ’15 sits down with Professor of Art David Schorr to discuss his current exhibition in the Davison Art Center, “APOTHECARY (storehouse).” The exhibition will continue through Thursday March 8.

David Schorr (American, born 1947), Remembered Laughter (detail), 2011, gouache and silverpoint on Fabriano paper. © 2011 David Schorr. Courtesy Mary Ryan Gallery, New York City (photo: R. J. Phil).

“For a problem that had been plaguing me, a wise ophthalmologist suggested I try artificial tears. In gratitude I made him a drawing of an apothecary bottle I had salvaged from my father’s medical office, changing the Latin of the original label to the Latin for ‘artificial tears.’ I became interested in drawing more of these bottles and started to collect them on eBay. Because I had long wanted a place to put away cherished values or to hide shameful thoughts, I discovered to my delight that the Greek word ΑΠΟΘΗΚΗ, from which our word ‘apothecary’ derives, means storehouse. This project followed.”

So indeed began Schorr’s work on APOTHECARY (storehouse), his newest exhibition on display at the Davison Art Center.   All of the paintings in this exhibit depict antique apothecary bottles, modeled after actual bottles Schorr has collected from all over the world.  Executed with scrupulous detail, each bottle appears to be suspended mid-canvas, lifelike and gleaming with iridescent color.  But these are no ordinary medicine bottles, and they carry no ordinary remedies. Their labels say things like “Silver Linings,”  “Sleepless Nights,” and “Stardust.”  Plenty of the labels are in different languages, and plenty more allude to literary sources–Shakespeare and Keats among countless others.

The premise of the series (which amounts to more than 75 paintings) seems simple—but the bottles’ vibrant colors and translucent depths, paired with the strange lure of their imaginary contents, give the entire space an aura that is both whimsical and mysterious.

“It really is meant above all to be fun, and, I hope, witty,” said Schorr in an interview about his work. “But I am particularly pleased if the wit and the quality of the drawing seduces some people into taking certain bottles as personal metaphors, bottles they have in their own storehouse. This can be a source of pleasure in something precious or a source of shame or discomfort realizing they have a bottle they keep tightly sealed because its contents are best not thought about, or not sampled.”

Phyllis Rose, Professor of English, Emerita, touches upon ideas like this in her essay entitled “Poetry in Bottles: Schorr’s Storehouse.” You can find this essay, which explores deeper meanings lurking within Schorr’s work, in a catalogue available in the exhibition room.

Schorr created these pieces using gouache and silverpoint on colored Fabriano Roma paper, a rare type of paper that he went to great lengths to secure.  He found the apothecary bottles through searches on eBay.  “Often they came in groups,” he said. “On the whole, once I had a particular style in a particular color that was fine and I didn’t need a duplicate, but I became very tuned in to subtle differences, especially the relation of the sides and neck to the slope of the shoulders.”

David Schorr (American, born 1947), Sleepless Nights (detail), 2011, gouache and silverpoint on Fabriano paper. © David Schorr. Courtesy Mary Ryan Gallery, New York City (photo: R. J. Phil).

He added, “Sometimes there would be a bottle that looked great, but opening the package I found it disappointing, but also the reverse. Some bottles really came to life only when I posed them and started to draw them.”

Schorr now has a vast collection of antique bottles, quite a few of which are assembled on a shelf in the exhibit.  Seeing these bottles in real life, in such a huge array of colors and shapes and sizes, adds to the striking effect of the exhibition as a whole. “I’m not certain what I am going to do with them all now, when the show is over,” he said. “I will probably keep a few treasured favorites and sell the others back on eBay.”

You can tell just by looking at the work in this collection that it took lots of time and attention to detail.  “Some of the best [pieces] were very spontaneous, finished in less than a week, others as long as three weeks,” said Schorr.

Venturing behind the scenes of his artwork, Schorr said, “I love finishing a picture late at night. I typically work until 3 AM, and when I finish a picture, I turn my easel to face the couch where I can stretch out and make myself a glass of juice with chopped ice and light the picture and put on a playlist of twenty or so different recordings of “Vissi d’Arte, Vissi d’Amore” from Tosca by Puccini and sit and look at the picture. About half the time I see tiny things I wish to change and do. But sometimes I just make a list of them and fix them the next day. I always think it’s too bad I don’t smoke, as that would be the perfect time for a cigarette.”

The longer you linger around the exhibit, wandering through this makeshift “storehouse,” the more you’ll appreciate the bottles’ mystique: even though they are right there in front of you, you will never be able to open them and sample their contents for yourself.  It’s up to you, the viewer, to derive meaning out of what you see.  Contemplating what lies within the bottles is not only a compelling experience; it can also be a deeply personal one.

APOTHECARY (storehouse) will remain at the Davison Art Center through Thursday March 8. After that, it will move to the Mary Ryan Gallery in New York City.

Rebecca Seidel ’15 reviews the exhibit “Metamorphosis” (on display through Dec. 9)

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Rebecca Seidel ’15 reviews the exhibit “Metamorphosis: The Collaboration between Photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum and the Suzhou Embroiderers”. The exhibit is on display at the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies through Friday, December 9, 2011. The gallery is open from noon to 4pm; admission is free.

Step up really close to “Graceful Branch Movement,” the most recent piece on display at the Metamorphosis exhibit, and you’ll get blissfully lost in the intricacy of the stitches, the vibrancy of the colors.  Take a few steps back and you’ll appreciate the depth and unity of the work as a whole.

“Graceful Branch Movement,” a six-foot-tall double-sided silk embroidery based on a photographic print by Robert Glenn Ketchum, hangs from the ceiling at the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, where it’s making its debut.  It is one of five such embroideries on display at the gallery, showcasing a prolific artistic collaboration that has spanned over two decades.

Metamorphosis, curated by Patrick Dowdey, exhibits the collaborative work of nature photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum and the Suzhou embroiderers.  Mr. Ketchum and master embroiderer Meifang Zhang began their first project together in 1986, and have been collaborating ever since.  With meticulous deliberation, they work to transform Mr. Ketchum’s photographic art into pieces of Chinese embroidery.

The fusion results in incredibly textured, seemingly three-dimensional works of art.  The pieces on display at the Mansfield Freeman Center merge the natural beauty of Mr. Ketchum’s photography with the intricate serenity of Chinese embroidery—an art form dating back to ancient times.

Mr. Ketchum says that despite a language barrier that prevents them from communicating conversationally, he and Ms. Zhang share a “common language” of appreciation for the work they seek to create.  This appreciation shines through in their collaborative work.

Creating these pieces takes a lot of planning, discussion, and imagination.  The final products display not only Mr. Ketchum’s original artistic intentions, but also the creative visions of the embroiderers.  The highly technical process of stitching also requires concentration and precision.

“When you’re experimenting with a piece like this, you can’t undo it if it doesn’t work well,” explained Ketchum. “If you do it wrong, there’s no going back and taking it apart.”

“Graceful Branch Movement” arrived at Wesleyan for its international debut from Ms. Zhang’s Suzhou Embroidery Art Innovation Center (SEAIC) in China.  As the exhibit’s brochure states, “Robert’s central vision of the super-real in nature comes out more strongly here than in any other work so far in the collaboration.  Meifang Zhang conveys a particular kind of natural beauty with delicacy and clarity in a way that leaves us enlightened.”

The exhibit spans almost the entire two decades of this collaboration: the oldest piece on display, a three-paneled standing screen embroidery called “Beginning of Time,” dates back to 1994.

The press release for this exhibit calls it “a visual experience you will never forget, featuring silk embroideries that celebrate a unique vision of the natural world.”  The embroideries on display certainly breathe an air of magic into Ketchum’s photography.  It’s the type of artwork that you have to see in person, and once you do, it’s pretty much impossible to turn away.

“I don’t bring these pieces out very often,” Ketchum notes. “They’re fragile and it takes a lot of effort to get a nice display.” Don’t miss your chance to see these creations for yourself while you can.