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Eric
Benson
"My work aims to create awareness and
inspire its viewers to take a part in the designing for the greater good of
society and the environment. I also use/reuse materials that have less of
an eco-footprint than the mainstream, carving a path towards a wider use of
sustainable materials in all of our creations."
Jerry
Butler
Butler is a professor at CCSU.
Karl
Bodmer
Bodmer is a 19th century artist whose
engravings appeared in Travels in the Interior of North America by Prince
Maximlian zu Wied.
In 1832 the Rhenish naturalist Alexander Philip
Maximilian, Prince of Wied,set out to explore natural history and native
populations of North America's northwest. Accompanying him was the Swiss artist,
Johann Karl Bodmer, who was to document the trip with sketches and paintings,
assist with the scientific collecting, and join in the hunt for wild game as
food. The years in which they visited America (1832-34) were pivotal in
the history of American expansionism, for it was a time that saw the rapid
development of the back country frontier. In 1833 mass migration along the
overland trail to Oregon and California was begun in earnest. It was the
beginning of the end of the unspoiled West.
The white Stone Walls, depicted by Bodmer, were
earlier described by Meriwether Lewis in 1805 in David Lavender's The Way of
the Western Sea. "IN a section the explorers called the 'Stone Walls',
the multihued bluffs were banded with a thick stratum of almost horizontal white
sandstone. In places this band was seamed perpendicularly by intrusive
dikes of dark brown volcanic porphyry. Erosion of the softer material
around the dikes had left the jointed rocks standing as trim as walls, only a
few feet thick and often scores of feet tall, of "workmanship so perfect...that
I should have though that Nature had attempted to rival the human art of
masonry.' Elsewhere water draining off the land in back of the steep bluffs had
worn the white sandstone 'into a thousand grotesque figures...almost entire with
their pedestels and capitals...some lying prostrate and broken.' Pyramids, organ
pipes, spires, niches, alcoves--scores of scenes of 'visionary inchantment.'
Fitting enough, this entrancing region was inhabited by large numbers of Rocky
Mountain bighorn sheep."
New Harmony is the site of two of America's great
utopian communities. The first, Harmonie on the Wabash (1814-1824) was
founded by the Harmony Society, a group of Separatists from the German Lutheran
Church. In 1814, led by their charismatic leader Johann Georg Rapp, they left
their first American home, Harmonie, PA. Indiana's lower Wabash Valley on
the western frontier gave them the opportunity to acquire a much larger tract of
land. In 1825, the Harmonists moved back to Pennsylvania and built the
town of Economy near Pittsburgh. Robert Own, Welsh-born industrialist and
social philosopher, then bought their Indiana town and the surrounding lands for
his communitarian experiment.
To accompany Maximilian's two-volume account of
their expedition book, Bodmer prepared 81 aquatints from the original
watercolors. For over a century, Bodmer's aquatints remained one of the
most valuable and definitive portrayals of the American frontier.
Matt
Bua
Bua is a New York based artist
represented by Derek Eller Gallery. His narrative biography follows.
For the last 15 years, I have been working
collaboratively on Public Installations which actively engage the community with
an elastic process which blurs the line between fact and fiction, manhood and
boyhood, truth and fiction. Past projects include a Parasitic Museum
attached to the backside of the Brooklyn Museum, an East River Rafting
expedition investigating some of Roosevelt Island's anomalies for PS1/MoMA,
purging the jumbled memories from an old Colonel's House on Governor's Island
for Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and raising sunken Scottish Fishing boats
from teh dead for Grizdale Arts in the Lake District of England.
My present artistic focus is on the creation of an
open air work space in Catskill, New York, where small structures will be
constructed and installed that exemplify aspects of visionary, vernacular,
alternative, and sustainable architecture. Each structure will focus on specific
themes and usages which will then be integrated into the surrounding community.
The land obtained for this project, unbeknownst to me at the time, contained the
peak of Vedder Mountain, which is named after Jessie Van Vechten Vedder, New
York state's first female historian, author of the History of Greene County.
A Vedder Mountain Summit house is in the works. The B-Home project will be
a place for both architects and non-architects to participate, experiment, and
realize the creation of unique structures and a chance to collaborate with the
natural environment.
The idea of "Architecture without Architects," as
Bernard Rudofsky's title to his 1956 MoMA exhibition suggests, is that there was
once a time when the act of building a home was a community activity using
locally-harvested materials and techniques handed down from previous
generations, a process absent of "architects." The upstate B-Home project
will be both a place for architectural experiments and a continuation of the
communal architecture of the past.
Perhaps only growing one's own food is more
empowering than building a home, especially an individual creation built from
local sources. By building and inhabiting one's own structure, we meld
ourselves with our physical environment and not only make our personal identity
manifest, but simultaneously combine it with every other thing.
http://www.derekeller.com/artists.html
Edward
Burtynsky
Burtynsky's work is on loan from the
Wadsworth
Atheneum. His statement follows.
Nature transformed through industry is a predominant
theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of
the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon,
and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich
in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings,
quarries and refineries are all places that outside of our normal experience,
yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.
These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma
of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and
repulsion, seduction, and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good
living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is
suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the
materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets
us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as
reflecting pools of our times.
Kate
Cheney Chappell
Cheney Chappell's work is on loan
from the New Britain
Museum of American Art. Her statement follows.
My need to connect with the earth and know myself as part of the web of being is
vital to my work as an artist; I believe it is also key to human survival and
the health of the planet. Our alienation and denial are leading to unprecedented
degradation of that which envelopes and sustains us: the air, soil, water, and
creatures on which we depend for life. I have been making “Earth Envelopes”
since 2002. They begin as flat, full sheets (22”x 30”) of Rives BFK paper that I
print as monotypes, then paint and collage over, and fold into womb-like shapes
that hang on the wall. Each has references to the elements, to creatures, to
genetic information, or to growth patterns. “Earth Envelopes” embody the
feminine principle in men and women that protects the enduring truths of human
connectivity and interdependence with nature. Just as an envelope of air
surrounds our earth, making life possible, may we become living envelopes of
that which is good and true and will sustain it.
The title “Amphibian Deformities” is taken from a disturbing article I happened
to read in National Geographic (1996), “The Sixth Extinction”, while on a
printmaking residency at the Vermont Studio Center. It documented in graphic
detail mutations in frogs that seem to be due to effects on the environment
caused by human activity.
I marvel at the diversity of the natural world and hope that my art will make
the viewer think about the mystery and beauty of life and about our
relationships with the creatures that share the earth with us.
Xavier
Cortada
(From the artist's website)
Xavier Cortada
is a Miami
artist who has been commissioned to create art for the White House, the World
Bank, the Florida Supreme Court, the Florida Governor's Mansion, Miami City
Hall, Miami-Dade County Hall, the Miami Art Museum, the Museum of Florida
History and the South Pole Station.
He
has worked with
groups across the world to produce numerous large-scale collaborative art
projects-- including peace murals in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, child welfare
murals in Bolivia and Panama, AIDS murals in Geneva and South Africa, and
eco-art installations on Miami Beach and Antarctica. In 2008, as a New York
Foundation for the Arts sponsored artist, he'll bring his art installations to
the North Pole.
www.xaviercortada.com
Kota
Ezawa
Kota Ezawa's work is on loan from the
Wadsworth Atheneum.
Erica
Fielder
Ercia Fielder's "Bird Feeder Hat" (papier
mache) is being constructed by CCSU student, Lisa Goldreich. Her artist
statement follows.
This is not just a hat. What do you think of that?
This is actually an Ecological Art project to introduce you and the
people who live in your Home Watershed—be it a small creek or
the mighty Mississippi—to the idea that we all live within wild
nature and can have a healthier planet if we pay more attention to
that fact.
What is a home watershed? It is a low spot in the
terrain—valley, gully, canyon, dip—that collects water when it rains
or the snow melts. Although it starts somewhere back up in the
hills, a watershed also collects the water carried by culvert
beneath your city streets. In addition, each watershed
contains a unique mix of plants, animals, geology, soils, air
currents, people, and more. We drink from watersheds and everybody
lives in one. Therefore your home watershed is the one in
which you live. Mine, for example, is a tiny gulch with an unnamed
creek that flows past my garden into the much bigger Ten Mile River
that flows into the sea.
During Bird Feeder Hat™ events we found that most
people did not know they lived in a watershed. Once we described it
to them and helped them find their home watershed on a map, they
knew exactly what we were talking about. They poured out
stories about their watersheds, what wonders they saw, how pristine
or devastated theirs was, and what they and others were doing to
clean them up. Some even discovered, in our conversation, that
"those environmentalists" were actually helping to make the
visitors' home watersheds a better place to live and begrudgingly
showed a bit of gratitude.
But why the hat? The Bird Feeder Hat™ is a
quirky way to get to know a few species that live in your watershed.
You first set up the right conditions to attract birds to the hat,
and then you develop the patience to sit with it on your head for
enough time for birds to land. When you follow these steps,
you naturally learn something about your surroundings and meet a
critter that lives with you in the watershed. During our
events we set up quiet places for people to sit beneath hats as well
as broad displays of maps that depicted watersheds around the world.
You can make a Bird Feeder Hat by following the
directions in the "Bird Feeder Instruction" booklets on sale in the
CCSU Art Galleries.
www.ericafielder-ecoartist.com
*
efielder@mcn.org
F.R.U.I.T
This computer website was created by
collaboration of artists, activists, researchers and gardeners.
www.free-soil.org/fruit
Green Street Arts
Center
Barbara
Hocker
Hocker is a Connecticut native whose
artwork is based in nature. Her artist statement follows.
My artistic practice occupies an
important place in my overall spiritual path. In integration with
yoga, meditation, and study (which includes readings in the history
and philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism and Wabi Sabi aesthetics), my
artwork is an outward, physical expression and communication of my
inner, subjective experience. I am seeking to combine the terms of
duality (mind/body, day/night, digital/physical,
realism/abstraction) in a way that radiates what lies behind and
beyond the illusion of opposition.
Wabi Sabi is a Japanese aesthetic
concept that grew out of Zen Buddhism and the Japanese Tea Ceremony.
One of the philosophical tenets of Wabi Sabi is that everything in
the world is in the process of either evolving from nothingness into
form or devolving from form back into nothingness and it is mostly
impossible to tell, and unnecessary to know, which direction any
particular thing is going. Each direction encompasses the other in
its potentiality. Hope and Loss always dance together in every
moment and everything is impermanent, imperfect, and in constant
flux. Wabi Sabi values “suchness” - the particular - over the
universal. It also emphasizes nature, intimate space, intuition,
ambiguity, and serendipity.
My artwork
inhabits an expanded field between photography, printmaking, and
digital media.
It is nature-based, intimate, purposely unsettled and imperfect.
There is a flow and play between reality, realism, and abstraction
expressing my direct experience of nature, beauty, and life. I am
interested in the abstraction of nature that is possible with
digital media and in expressing the atmosphere or “feeling” of a
place more than capturing a technically exact photograph.
Most of
my work begins with time spent in Connecticut’s state forests and
nature preserves with a digital camera. This time is a moving
meditation, allowing images to present themselves and seeking
serendipity.
Back
in the studio,
I am concerned with
returning the “digital” image to
a concrete/physical manifestation.
The finished digital images are given form by careful attention to
the tactile qualities of paper, and combined with abstract
monotypes, encaustic, and branches.
My goal is an aching beauty that is
somehow both touching and disquieting.
In my sculpture and installations, I
use these techniques to create a sense of immersion and sanctuary.
This is achieved through the use of a miniature scale in relation to
the size of the room and image cropping, which allows the space of
the artwork to open out into the space of the viewer instead of
pushing away into a perspective space. This invites viewers to
imaginatively immerse themselves in the space of the artwork, which
encourages intimacy. Again, I am seeking that “feeling” of the deep
woods, mindfulness, and meditation.
http://bahocker.30art.com/
Bob
Johnson
Johnson is the coordinator of the
Rivercube participatory art works.
Warren
Mather
Mather is a Massachusetts based
artist whose statement follows.
Recent work of mine
has been about seeing what we are surrounded by but don’t perceive.
“Long Nook” began as a formal exercise, a vertical panorama of the
division line of land and sea. From single photos taken just as each
wave crested I spliced together an all at once 360-degree vertical
revolution of what the camera recorded.
In the assembled
vertical panorama of “Long Nook,” I see the water as it rushes up
over the land. It is a flood tide that does not recede, an emblem of
the rise in ocean levels, an inevitable consequence of global
warming.
Dana
Melamed
Melamed is a New York based artist
represented by Priska Juschka Fine Art. Her statement follows.
It took me awhile to figure it out;
to sort through what I call: The Rush. It is smog-filled, noisy
and chaotic. Intoxicating and suffocating. It simultaneously
tortures and excites. The polarized layers of debris are filthy,
alarming, exhilarating, but alive.
Is this multi-layered city an
architectural disaster, whose turmoil loads the senses and then
smothers them? I want the viewer to experience the frantic and
obsessive force of city life. Although chaos is detrimental - it
is anything but numbing. It is pulsating with energy.
People are absent from the work
deliberately. We are the people. We are invisible, yet we are
trapped in this place where there is no oxygen and no escape. A
wave of panic sweeps over us until we suddenly realize that this
work reflects the pace of our own brain. The pace is deafening
and we feel trapped under the layers of its rubble.
As if driving into a dense cloud,
the eye is unable to capture the large spectrum of images at the
first blink. My aim is for the viewer’s eye to adjust slowly. It
is a journey from darkness to light, from black to white.
I created a three-dimensional
surface by dipping printing waste and film into acrylic and
glue, torching and melting them, then drawing and scratching
into the layers with a razor. The fusion of these unconventional
materials is affected by fluctuating external elements. I
therefore never know what to expect.
The use of destructive techniques
reflects the same traits as urban life - the materials
assimilate into the work, losing their identity in the same
manner that city dwellers do, rendering them anonymous. At the
same time, it is a journey deeper into our personal layers and
past, our own thoughts and emotions. Perhaps if we dig deeper,
we can find ourselves beyond the bustle, noise, chaos, and at
last - beneath the surface.
http://www.priskajuschkafineart.com/artists/
Kyle Andrew
Philips
Philips's work is on loan from the
New Britain Museum of
American Art.
Scott
Prior
Scott Prior lives and works in
Northampton, Massachusetts, where he has been a resident since
1971. Born in Exeter, New Hampshire, he received a BFA in
printmaking from the University of Massachusetts in 1971. He has
artwork in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Museum,
the Danforth Museum, the Rose Art Museum and other major public
and private collections. He has shown extensively in one-person
and group shows in the United States and abroad. In 2001 he had
a mid-career retrospective at the DeCordova Museum. Scott Prior
is represented by the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York City and
the Alpha Gallery in Boston. (From Scott Prior's
website.)
Prior's work is on loan from the
New Britain Museum of
American Art.
http://www.scottpriorart.com/
Mat
Robinson
Robinson is a student at CCSU.
His statement follows.
Growing up, I lived in a rural community in Granby, Connecticut with
my mother, a former art teacher, and my father, an avid outdoorsmen
and history enthusiast. Together they have influenced and helped
form who I have become. While in college, I have lived in low-income
areas in historic industrial cities, such as New Britain, “hardware
city”, and Johnstown, New York,
once the hub of
America's glove making industry. I became
fascinated with turn-of-the-century industrial architecture,
landscapes and photography. These topics, over a six-year span, lead
me back to fine art and formed my current direction.
In my
paintings I construct vast, surreal landscapes in which I summarize
and
exaggerate the alteration of the earths
surface. The landscapes that I create are unsettling and have an
eerie, disquieting, apocalyptic feel. My concepts are inspired by
large-scale manmade structures such as overpasses, dams and
trestles. These are overwhelming structures, which confine or
connect elements of the earth. To best convey my message, I
choose a two-dimensional square, not a traditional rectangular,
horizontal canvas, to carry the geometric elements of my paintings
to their outermost edges in a modern style. I apply acrylic paint
and mixed media because of its practicality in both drying time and
versatility. In many of my works, I have used clippings,
polymer image or texture transfers,
adding new dimension to the piece. The technique is a play on
perception; the viewer may see a detailed area and assume that it is
consistent throughout the piece. In the process of a painting, a
small clipping can be a color reference or trigger the creation of
context and environment.
Movements in
history such as Eco Art, Land Art, Hudson River School and American
landscape painting are major influences
to my artwork. In painting, I
admire the works of Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, and
Peter Homitzky for their non-traditional interpretations of color
and direction of the landscape. Land
artists like, Mary Miss, Walter De Maria and photographer
Edward Burtynsky have inspired my specific topic of study. I was
particularly inspired by the film, Edward Burtynsky, Manufactured
Landscapes (2006). The industrial realities, which Burtynsky
documents in his photographs, are raw and honest. He reminds us of
the strain man induces on our planet and resources.
My
works represent the fears of my generation. They are a collection of
images that are of grand or overwhelming manmade structures and
activity, which are presented by ambiguous means. These are
unsettling reminders that we are unable to control our surroundings.
Juliana
Sabinson
Dannielle
Tegeder
Tegeder is a New York based artist
represented by Priska Juschka Fine Arts.
(From the Priska Juschka website)
Inspired primarily by architectural blueprints and technological sketches,
Tegeder creates seemingly abstract environments composed of interconnected
recurrent forms. Tegeder employs an analytical approach towards both color and
material in her work. Through her use of disorienting spaces of floating
architectural fragments, and a precarious balance of objects, Tegeder references
and reconsiders early 20th century painting and design, while at the same time
instilling a very personal aesthetic that is ironically evocative of post-modern
visions of the future.
http://www.priskajuschkafineart.com/artists/
Peter
Waite
Waite's work is on loan from the
Wadsworth Atheneum.
http://www.peterwaite.com
Joy
Wulke
Wulke, an artist from Stony Creek,
Connecticut, writes...
I
tell stories about time and our natural and human environment using familiar
images and materials in unfamiliar juxtapositions creating illusion of concepts
we think we know. The present, that fleeting moment between memory and
anticipation and the relation of all three to what we perceive to be reality
feeds the concepts for the stories.
Geological movement throughout the earth's history
and its resulting land and sea formations is of great interest to me.
Ancient rock formations present landscapes that reveal themselves to be sculpted
by time, the Storrs of Scotland, for example. All landscapes are evolving,
shaped by wind, water, fire, ice, and shifting landmass. The Earth is dynamic.
It is in constant flux adding and subtracting lands, seas, and species.
Since humankind has inhabited the earth, the balance of natural time shifts have
begun to unravel. We are speeding up the climate change that is part of
the natural cycle of the earth, putting all living things in peril. I
acknowledge the beauty and inspiration of nature through my work with the ogal
of revealing the urgency of our responsibility for stewardship to keep it
accessible, healthy, and free to move as its own pace towards the next evolution
of land and life forms. We do not want to have the natural landscape
become only available to us "underglass."
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