Spectacular and Resourceful Creativity
On Nov. 17, PVCC’s Visual Arts Department hosted a free-entry art exhibition. The exhibition was held on the main campus in the Dickinson Building and curated by Fenelle Belle, associate professor of art. The theme of the exhibit was Spare Parts, which entails that the artist must use a vast array of everyday items that one might take for granted or consider unnecessary and craft an art piece of their own out of them. The wide variety of different sculptures, collages, and assemblage works all shared the same characteristics of direct inspiration from PVCC’s One Book program selection of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Entering the exhibition, the audience is given a packet handout. On the packet is a list of all the artists who have their work displayed for those to see, which includes Kim Boggs, Diana Hale, Mary Lamb, Terri Long, Deborah O’Keefe, Nikki Painter, Laura Parsons, Charles Peale, Noah Scalin, and Aggie Zed. Along with the list of names is a written answer from all of the artists who were asked the same question, “Why do you like working with existing or pre-made parts for your artwork?” Not only was this an interesting way to get the perspectives of each artist, but it also gave those who are viewing the art some insight into the creative process.
The variety of art pieces was truly spectacular, even though the artists used limited supplies for the pieces; the artists did a phenomenal job. A favorite among the viewers was Noah Scalin’s pieces, which used a wide variety of stickers from different sorts of media on a panel to create an overarching image. A piece that stood out to me was Nikki Painter’s Night Garden pieces, which illustrate a painting of flowers but use a mixture of gouache, pen, and collage on paper to create an extremely vibrant and eye-grabbing painting. But there was no other piece of artwork that I thought deserved all the praise it received, other than Aggie Zed’s Blow on the Never, Flys First Word, Fully Funded Rover, My Opposable Thumbs, and The Early Clone Gets the Contract.
Zed’s sculptures truly captured the spare parts ideology and pertain to the essence of Shelley’s Frankenstein. The sculptures were crafted from ceramic, mixed metals, and plastic and resembled unnatural and uncanny creatures with man-made machinery. Her artwork was truly thought-provoking to me and resembled something straight out of Silent Hill or Mirror Mask. “Because the sculptures begin with figurative elements, I think of them, and feel them, as characters while I work. Often they feel like underdog beings, and I feel tenderness towards them while complex structures build up around them, supporting them while threatening to topple them,” Zed said when asked about the creative process of her work. “The common denominator for almost all of my work is an appreciation of the existential struggle of the individual, especially the individual’s relationship with technology and mechanisation.”
PVCC’s Spare Parts Art Exhibition was truly both thought-provoking and eye-opening about being resourceful with the items we have at our disposal. The Spare Parts exhibit will show from Nov. 17 to Jan. 10. If you are even remotely interested in viewing these pieces for yourself, I would not wait too long to do so.
