2007 MFA Thesis Exhibition

2008-04-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth

College of Visual and Performing Arts
715 Purchase Street
New Bedford, Massachusetts

Fragile Environments

I remember myself at nine years old, on a warm summer day, walking through a dense, moving carpet of seven hundred and fifty yellow goslings at my neighbor's apple orchard. The goslings' fuzzy, delicately small bodies, huddled together, creating a widespread layer of fragile life. My steps were careful as I walked within this sea of life, and at the same time, the goslings responded to my movement through their mass. The awareness, and the quiet, gentle responsive motion between the goslings and myself, continues to inspire and influence my work.

stacked leaves, approximately 6' tall, made of porcelain slip, a porcelain egg and carved twigs

Tower is a precarious structure about the vulnerability that comes from needing support from other humans in order to survive. Tower begins with thin, almost transparent, porcelain slip-cast leaves, each oval leaf with an individual pattern of delicate veins. Numerous leaves are placed, one-on-top-of-another, to create a precarious, six foot tall, towering stack of white leaves. The instability of the tower is enhanced by the undulation of the leaf column and its placement high overhead. The structure supporting the leaves is sparse; it begins with a minimal platform of thin, spindly twigs attached to the wall, and continues upwards with a few twig pegs jutting out of the wall for additional brief support. The platform and pegs create a structure which makes the propped up stack of leaves possible, but just barely. A thin-shelled, warmly toned, porcelain egg perches atop the teetering stack. The egg is so far out of reach and similar in color, that it is almost not visible, requiring careful, or sustained observation in order to see the partially camouflaged egg. The leaves create a fragile landscape in which the egg may rest, but not a completely safe place to rest. The survival of the stack, thus the egg, is in peril.

an 11' x 9' area of porcelain shards dotted with porcelain birds

Shards, in a quiet way, is about noticing a fragile form in nature and a needed human awareness and attention towards other life. Shards consists of a mass of delicate porcelain, hollow twig shapes, reminiscent of slight bones, placed as an eleven foot by nine foot white landscape on the floor. This mass becomes a stark, barren, and ghostly or somber, white background in which small spots of tender life are hidden, camouflaged within the highly textured white surroundings. Upon close inspection, these tender spots can be identified as small white porcelain birds dotting the relatively vast landscape. Each bird is similar, yet individual with an outstretched wing or scalloped tail feather, and is nestled into the shards or next to each other, enhancing their sentient quality, their tenderness and vulnerability. I use camouflage, a small bird form, clay as a fragile material, and placement on the floor to show that destruction might occur, a bird could be crushed from a hastily placed footstep, without careful observation.

16' span of twig structure and porcelain snail

Bridge, a lone snail on a minimal structure, is about survival and vulnerability. Bridge consists of two scaffolding-like structures of long, narrow twigs spanning a sixteen feet space between two columns within the gallery. The structures span the space, but do not extend far enough to connect to each other, leaving a gap in the center. The twig framework, attached overhead to one column, is complex and intricate in form and then dwindles to a single, long, thin twig reaching into the stretch of space between the columns. At the end of the twig, gripping the tip of the slender stem, is a lone, white, porcelain snail. As the twig bends downward, so does the body of the snail and the snail reaches out into empty space; its antennae stretch, feeling for the twig support in the near distance that arches out from the other gallery column. The twig framework within Bridge supports the snail’s survival, providing a landscape for it to survive, but just barely. The network of twigs is precarious, tenuous and ephemeral, and leaves a gap, a break in the pathway of support. As with Tower, the framework of twigs becomes a metaphor for what is lacking within the structure of our human community.

porcelain, carved twigs and felted wool

Between Two Of Us is about the fragility of the vital connection between humans. This work touches on a quiet longing for safety through the sufficient support from another being. The aura of this work is ephemeral and has a quietness, the creamy white, ghostly sadness of silent longing. As within each of my thesis works, Between Two Of Us consists of a structure that barely supports another vulnerable element. This work begins with a linear section of two twigs, joined together and protruding from the wall a bit overhead. These twigs then arch downward, and from the tip of the twig dangles an almost invisible thread-like material attached to a soft creamy-white, wool-felted cocoon form. The cocoon has a small opening at the top and with some effort, can be peered into, discovering a partially revealed porcelain shape, reminiscent of an embryo or other fragile nascent life. The cocoon form, narrow at the top and thicker and rounded at the bottom, is suspended in mid-air and sways perilously with the slightest of air current. The other portion of this work consists of a similarly ephemeral structure. Two slim twigs are joined with a single miniscule twig pin and are stretching out from the wall horizontally. At the tip of this twig arm is a thin stem attached to a delicate cup-shaped leaf, creamy-white in color. The upper-tip area of the cupped leaf is directly under, and six inches below, the swelled bottom of the back of the cocoon. The cupped leaf could be support for the fragile life within the cocoon, but the leaf and the twigs that support the leaf, are fragile in themselves; the twig-leaf arm suggests an offering of support, but in reality, the support might be nominal.

polluted water, porcelain pipes, floor and bird

Drip Bird is about a vulnerable element, isolated, and quietly suffering through a hazardous predicament, yet maintaining resilience. Drip Bird contains a network of white porcelain slip-cast pipes, similar in form and color to the existing gallery pipes and ceiling ductwork, twisting into an angling, tangled mass above our heads and then stretching downward, terminating at a section of horizontal pipe jutting out into space two feet, six inches from the floor. The area surrounding the small hole at the end of the white pipe is tainted with a crusty brown-black residue, the same residue that encrusts a shallow tray, a three-foot square section of white slip-cast floor, directly under the pipe end. A single, isolated, small porcelain bird is sitting in the center of the floor section, at one time white, now brown and encrusted with residue from the once dripping dirty water. The bird has quietly suffered its predicament, the contamination and bombardment of polluted water, but was resilient and now reflects a beauty from the dried crystalline scum. I use the pipe structure of Drip Bird as a metaphor for society’s structure, the tangled area of pipes alluding to dysfunction and a convoluted effect on the isolated, silent bird below.

special thanks to

Rebecca Hutchinson
Jim Lawton
Steve Whittlesey
Charlotte Hamlin

Dawn Stetzel / MFA Thesis Exhibition

2007 MFA Thesis Exhibition