the Cave

Monday, May 23rd, 2011 @ 4:16 pm

atmosphere, cave, environment, home, living, narrative, sculpture, space, transform

Mid-second semester, I became interested in the idea of creating spaces, especially spaces that are completely unusual in their context. Like converting a work studio space into a cave that’s still completely functional as a work studio, so trees and rocks would open to reveal cabinets and drawers, etc. That would be a far more complicated version of what ended up being my final for Visual Language 2.

This was an open assignment, as long as it incorporate narrative in some way. I wanted to make something to do with home, and I just loved the idea of making a cave, so I converted a small alcove in a dingy hallway in school (which some of you might remember from my fist-print wall first semester) into a cave living space. The viewer would walk down the stairs (or through a dark hallway) into this small space without any lights on, and turn to see a bed-like platform with a small fur blanket strewn across it, and lights behind it pointing upward at the rocky wall. Sounds of cave echoing, water drips, and deep growl-snoring reverberated through the space.

It was a pretty magnificent transformation, and everybody who said anything to me about it loved it. Students, staff and faculty, and my teacher all gave great praise for the work involved, the space as a finished project, and me as a student and artist. If my drawing final was an emotional capstone, this would be its 3D counterpart; this is where I hope to go with my art.

My work takes common materials and makes them into fictional, functional new things. Incorporating a large amount of fantasy, I create lived-in spaces, used objects, worn clothing or tribal relics with history and meaning. I take familiar things and transform them into new and different things in an invented universe – of their own, or one shared with past projects.

I create stories and histories for objects and spaces they would never have. Ancient things recovered from an only partially-known history are the most fascinating things to work with and create because of the amount of freedom they give the imagination.

I make things that are authentic in the feelings they incite in the viewer, the responses they generate; hundreds of people may walk through a constructed cave home and see and feel different things, from fear to awe, all of which would be valid responses to something at once threatening and dark, and at the same time intimate and honest. My works are essences that leave room for the imagination to fill in its own stories and invent its own worlds for the works to reside in.

I make things to inspire the sense of wonder, awe and excitement that their ideas inspire in me when I come up with them; they are meant to ignite the imaginations and childish wonder of everyone of every age. The cave is the second project I’ve done this year in this low-level corridor at MassArt, and it is a very versatile place. In order to see my projects, one must descend from the usual level of the school into a dim, grimy hallway. This incites various feelings, like mental or emotional descent, descent into a more intimate or personal space (i.e. a basement), or a temporary escape from any normal state of being. This makes it easier for one to become a child, wondering and awe-inspired, or frightful and timid, in a space like the mystery creature’s cave.

The viewer would walk down the stairs (or through a dark hallway) into this small space without any lights on, and turn to see a bed-like platform with a small fur blanket strewn across it, and lights behind it pointing upward at the rocky wall. Sounds of cave echoing, water drips, and deep growl-snoring reverberated through the space.