EXHIBITION STATEMENT:

Visual Thinking: Recent Works by St. Lawrence University Studio Art Faculty provides an opportunity for students and others to see faculty outside the classroom as professional artists in their own right. Each artist’s process reconsiders the form and function of her or his preferred medium(s). Their work establishes contemporary art’s relationship to traditional materials and how these known materials create new visions and processes of seeing and communicating visually.

ARTISTS INCLUDED:

Velma Bolyard
Kasarian Dane
Amy Hauber
Rachael Jones
Sarah Knobel
Melissa Schulenberg
Liza Paige
Raymond Whalen

IN THE MEDIA:

Paintings on aluminum by Kasarian Dane investigate form and the “complexities of color through hard-edged, geometric divisions” to explore “the possibility of reductive painting to open up a space for contemplation, clarity, remembrance, and beauty.”

Artists’ books grow out of Velma Bolyard’s absorption of and interaction with the processes of making paper from foraged fibers or natural fiber cloth; making dyes, paints, or pigments from plants and minerals she finds or is given; spinning and weaving fibers and paper into pages and covers for her books; and the poems or stories that emerge through the interaction of skilled hands, open heart, mindfulness, and the felt companionship with the natural world.

In her Seed Collector Series and a related installation piece, Rachael Jones reveals the “archeological quality of clay that compels the forms [she makes] and the interactions that they evoke. When language fails to explain the nuances of material intimacy, clay provides a platform for understanding humankind’s deep emotional history with our environment and the objects we surround ourselves with.”

Amy Hauber, whose “conceptual interests have always originated from [her] personal life experiences and interest in popular and media cultures,” presents “small sculptural works, process drawings/paintings, as well as a personal, wearable ‘flag’ that questions contemporary notions of uncertainty and surrender.”

Photographs by Sarah Knobel explore her “preoccupation with everyday consumption and how the natural and artificial worlds can collide.” She writes, “I focus on the mundane waste of my family’s consumption, mainly plastic packaging, whose sole purpose is to protect an item until it comes into our home.” Ultimately, the works create “opposing illusions that are simultaneously optimistic and hostile, beautiful yet repulsive.”

An interactive 2D Dorm Room by Liza Paige “transforms a 3-dimensional space into a 2-dimensional illusion of a drawn space. The viewer is encouraged to become part of the drawing itself, rather than follow the traditional ‘look, but don’t touch’ approach to viewing artworks. The drawing welcomes the viewer into the space and encourages interaction (lie in the bed, put on the robe, sit at the desk, type on the laptop, etc.). Photographs are encouraged.”

Clay sculptures from plaster molds by Raymond Whalen from his Reliving Sustainable Living series focus on corn and crows, and the interconnectivity of both, especially to indigenous populations. Using a low-tech method called sawdust firing, the artist has intentionally moved away from the propane gas reduction kiln in an effort to reduce his own carbon footprint.

Printmaker Melissa Schulenberg presents an oversized woodcut measuring 4×5 feet from a design based upon Japanese chiyogami, a highly decorative paper usually used for origami. The inked sheet of birch plywood she used to create the print will also be on display, alongside smaller mokuhanga prints based on visual patterns she encountered during her time spent in Japan.