installations
“Action, Reaction, Interaction”
Florida Gulf Coast University ArtLab Gallery
“Action, Reaction, Interaction”, at FGCU, March ’22, brought together ideas I’d been exploring a in smaller scale. Since the ArtLab Gallery offered a freedom to experiment with the space, I began thinking in terms of installation rather than exhibition. Color, light, shadows, and scale were of primary interest in my goal to create an immersive feeling upon entering the space. I had been arranging my cutouts on a long format lightbox in a kind of modern day frieze. Then noticing the light fluctuations that were happening as I photographed it, I started using that in the digital image, resulting in bright colors behind the dark silhouettes. Translating this idea into larger scale on the wall as mixed media became the focus for this show. I let the silhouettes and shapes I had been stenciling in my paintings become separate elements floating on the 3 brightly painted 9’ paper panels, to create more depth with shadows. Painting two of the walls black on which to loosely hang those panels added an element of drama. During the month it was up, I added large black on black cutouts at the edges and below the first panel. Papercut pieces in mandala-inspired formats hung loosely on the third wall, along with a painting featuring 2 large wood cutouts.
entering "Action, Reaction, Interaction" ArtLab
view from outside ArtLab
Combustible Landscape" and "Broken World Calls for Action" corner
Broken World Calls for Action" mixed media installation with back lighting, flashlights, corrugated plastic wood, newspaper collage, paper cuts, thread.
“Rising, Falling", paper cutouts with acrylic, mounted on acrylic on Arches panel and wall
Enigmatic Sheela-na-gig, (right) papercut, 2021
ArtLab view from left end
Combustible Landscape. mixed media, 2022 "Combustible Landscape", paper cutouts with acrylic, string, computer mouse, mounted on acrylic on Arches panel and surrounding wall
Combustible Landscape" detail
The title, “Action, Reaction, Interaction”, has meaning for me on multiple levels. Many of my images and motifs depict some kind of action, or motion implied through repetition. My cutouts interact with each other through their juxtapositions within the compositions, creating a kind of narrative or dialog. I respond to events around me through elements I choose to create and assemble. Then, there is opportunity for reaction and interaction with the viewer visiting the space, through personal interpretations, conversations, taking selfies as some did, and through participation in making rubbings or adding color to my design in tie dyeing the shirts. The artwork I chose for the invitation, “Broken World Calls for Action”, expresses the theme in response to urgent issues and events visible in the window of headlines, in the small scale staging that layers the elements of imagery, collage, objects, and light sources, in the movement of the protest doily hanging by a thread, all enhanced by the drama of light and shadows.