WHAT CONNECTS US
This installation of 4 panels each 4’x8’ where originally created for an exhibition Interconnection a 2 person exhibition with Beth Stoddard at Schlueter Art Gallery inside Wisconsin Lutheran College in Milwaukee, WI
Panels are created by adhering clothing pattern paper to thin poly carbonate ( recycled from a former workplace) to be visible on both sides. The wrinkles created in this process inform the patterns that have been hand drawn with crayon, colored pencil,and painted. Pieces were also cut out of the pattern so that shadows would create a nest-like pattern in the midde of the panels when hung in a circle with lights pointing inward.This organic pattern has appeared in my work ever since this exhibition. It resembles mycelium, microscopic bone, dendrites, circulatory system and a myriad of other forms found in nature.
What Connects Us pictured above as viewed from the middle of the installation in the Schlueter Art Gallery 2021.
Below are other photos from the Interconnected Exhibition
At tma contemporary exhibition 2022
“What Connects Us” was juried into the TMA Contemporary Exhibition in 2022 with many other Wisconsin artists.
More photos below
Shared with viewers for this exhibition :
The process of creating this work was also a practice of connection, letting go and trusting. Adhering sewing pattern paper to thin upcycled plastic, the wrinkles were a guide as they branched together and apart. As layers of paint, marker, pencil and crayon converged to create the patterns, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s audiobook Braiding the Sweetgrass played in the background, her reassuring voice calling for the development of reciprocal relationships with the land we inhabit.
What connects us, the title of this installation is written as a statement but it’s also a question. The answers to What connects us are endless and will always help us feel a sense of belonging even when classifications, systems, or pandemics may leave us feeling isolated.
Feel supported by the myriad of ways nature connects with us and runs through our cells. If you walk into the center of this installation a few lines from the novel Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov are worth sharing.
And blood-black nothingness began to spin
A system of cells interlinked within
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played
Perspectives at THelma Sadoff
“What Connects Us” was juried into the Wisconsin Visual Artists Perspectives Exhibition in 2023 with many other Wisconsin Visual Artists.
Photos below by Carla Grzybowski and Frank Juarez
