PARALLAX - Massart Metals Symposium Event
PARALLAX: the apparent displacement or the difference in apparent direction of an object as seen from two different points…
Saturday October 27th 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Pozen Center, North Hall
621 Huntington Ave. Boston, MA 02115
This event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in the MassArt parking lot
R.S.V.P. required
Speakers include: Iris Eichenberg, Lauren Fensterstock, Katja Prins, Andrea Wagner, Deb Todd Wheeler and Joe Wood.
This one-day conference event takes advantage of an opportunity to compare two separate bodies of work. At Massachusetts College of Art and Design, there will be two separate exhibitions installed in the Bakalar Gallery; Golden Clogs, Dutch Mountains and IN SITU.
Both of these exhibitions stem from investigations in jewelry and personal object making. Since jewelry and objects for personal use have an essential built-in context, the divergent approaches the artists take in these two very different exhibitions is intriguing. It sheds light on the differences in the approach to context in personal adornment and object making as art. As explorations and investigations that use jewelry and personal objects as a point of departure, there is always an implied function or context. How these two groups employ context illustrates a fundamental difference in cultured perspective.
The exhibition Golden Clogs, Dutch Mountains, organized by Andrea Wagner, features the work of relatively young artists working in the Netherlands. With a recognized legacy of bold defiance to convention, Dutch works often pose questions for the viewer and wearer to reconcile historic references with new materials and associations.
The artists in the exhibition IN SITU organized by Joe Wood are a group of young artists working primarily in the US. These artists work from a similar point of departure. They too employ elements from conventional approaches to jewelry and personal object making but that is where the two groups diverge. Where one group (Dutch) embraces the open, enigmatic and fragmentary the other creates a full-blown narrative fiction around the objects. For the Americans, the object remains central to the experience but only as it becomes wrapped in a specific personal projection of the artist’s intent. Interaction, experience and documentation become intregal to the work.
In both cases, context of the object is a focus. With the respective differences of vantage that these two groups of artists have we may see this essential element in more depth and clarity.
and handed out free copies of Metalsmith to attendees and vendors. They only had the recent Exhibition in Print issue available so I had to explain that it was the special issue. I wish I had a copy of the regular version of the magazine to show people too.
