Canada Free Press -- ARCHIVES

Because without America, there is no free world.

Return to Canada Free Press

Rochester Tourism

Memorial Art Gallery exhibits Extreme Materials

Garden hoses, pencil shavings, fish skins, carrots, rubber tires, eggshells, smog… These are but a few of the unorthodox media that you’ll see in an exhibition titled Extreme Materials currently showing and organized by the Memorial Art Gallery of Rochester, New York.

Some of the 35-featured artists employ discarded materials in the spirit of recycling or making do. For others, the work is about ancestry and heritage. And many simply delight in extracting beauty from mundane, otherwise overlooked objects-or pushing the envelope in terms of how unexpected a choice of media can be. Most of the 42 works on view are from 2000 or later, by national and international artists.

Susan Colquitt of Marquette, MI., scavenges thrift shops looking for clothing with just the right kind of zippers, which she transforms into sculptures akin to spiky sea urchins or exotic underwater plants. Emily Dvorin of Kentfield, CA., gives the traditional craft of basketry a contemporary twist by using such urban ingredients as plastic swimming pool covers.

Carol Hepper’s (New York City) translucent fish-skin tapestries suggest a spiritual connection with nature dating back to her girlhood on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota. Chakaia Booker also of New York City creates totemic sculptures from clipped, snipped and twisted rubber tires; the patterns of the treads suggest African textiles as well as ritual scarification. From San José, CA., Binh Danh considers life and death as he makes "chlorophyll prints" of victims of Khmer Rouge on leaves exposed to sunlight.

Sometimes the medium is the message. Kim Abeles of Los Angeles created her Presidential Commemorative Smog Plates by exposing stenciled plates to the elements on the roof of her Los Angeles home; the more egregious a president’s record on the environment, the darker the "exposure." Tom Fruin (Brooklyn, NY) turned the all-American quilt into something more sinister when he stitched together a "treasure map" from plastic drug bags he picked up around a Brooklyn housing project. On the lighter side, Larry Fuente (Mendocino, CA) turns a 1960 Cadillac de Ville into a representation of American consumer excesses, from the stuffed-animal upholstery to the outrageously decorated tailfins.

The show is sponsored and underwritten by Richard F. Brush, the Gouvernet Arts Fund of Rochester Area Community Foundation and an anonymous donor, with additional support from Breckenridge Kling and the Marie C. and Joseph C. Wilson Foundation.

Extreme Materials remains on view through April 9.

Go with an open mind and reconsider your preconceived ideas about what constitutes "art."

The Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester is located at 500 University Avenue in Rochester, New York. Tel: 585-473-7720.

The GRVA is the leading resource to market the Greater Rochester community as the first choice for living, working, learning and enjoying life - for ourselves and others who wish to join us for a weekend or a lifetime.