By Valerie Franklin (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 11, 2015
Interosculate: to form connecting links.
It’s the title of this year’s visual arts diploma grad show — and just like the word suggests, the university community came together at the S’eliyemetaxwtex Gallery on March 6 to celebrate the work of this year’s graduating artists, with over 50 attendees filling the small gallery.
The gallery’s far wall is taken up by the word Interosculate, formed by green thread woven around carefully placed nails. Students Tanya McMillan and Shannon Pahladsingh were behind the mural’s creation, which took 15 hours.
“We all decided on the word ‘interosculate,’ and then we decided to put the title across a full wall, since they hadn’t done that before,” says McMillan. “It works, since the whole show is about connecting lines.”
The works in the grad show incorporate a broad variety of media, and although the title of the exhibit may suggest connections between them, each piece is wildly different. “Peach Blossom Spring,” an animation by Jiayi Zhong projected on the wall beside the door, depicts paper cut-out figures travelling by boat across Chinese landscape paintings, bringing new movement and life to the traditional watercolour style. Balsa wood raindrops, an untitled sculpture piece by Willow Mussell, are suspended from the ceiling, casting rainy blue shadows on the wall. And across from the raindrops, a life-size figure composed entirely of chicken wire is seated on a folding chair.
“It’s about meditation,” explained Dorothy Keating, creator of the prickly wire figure, which is titled “Release.” “It’s posed in the elementary meditation position, the first position you learn. The idea is to take the most terrible material I could think of and use it to make a piece about meditation and life’s problems.”
The exhibit features a variety of traditional art forms as well. McMillan’s framed ink piece “Eye of the Storm” consists of a series of startlingly symmetrical overlapping mandalas; Sylvia Canfield’s realistic acrylic paintings make punchy social statements; and “Mental Glow” by Reece Spofford depicts one face emerging from another, decorated with earthy tendrils and glowing points of white. Photographer Sarah Sovereign produced a series of abstract portraits of women, including “Cocoon” — a crouching woman’s figure swathed entirely in gauzy white fabric in the middle of a forest, her face barely distinguishable, the hint of a flower tucked behind her ear.
Sovereign’s work is inspired by 19th-century literature she read in an English class taught by Karen Selesky, especially the detective novel The Woman in White, in which a strong female character loses her “voice” and power when a male character reads her private diary.
“That inspired me to look at historic female figures, and other figures in history too,” said Sovereign.
“I work as a family photographer, so my personal stuff is abstract, quite different,” she added.
Many of the works in Interosculate share Sovereign’s dreaminess and abstraction. Pahladsingh’s work is marked by a celestial motif, including “Roadside Constellations,” a series of photographs contrasting stars with city lights at night, and “Bring Back the Night,” a triptych painting with three vertically ascending panels: road at the bottom, clouds above it, starry skies on the highest level. And Keating’s ceiling-to-floor piece “Dream On!” symbolizes a dreamscape, with hundreds of pins hammered into tree-patterned wallpaper; under the bright gallery lights, they cast a cascade of thin black shadows down the piece, drawing the dreamer’s eye lower and deeper.
“I’m very fascinated by dreams, the unconscious and subconscious minds,” said Keating. “I have very vivid dreams and I remember them, and they fascinate me.”
UFV president Mark Evered, who addressed the crowd at the opening celebration, noted that he always looks forward to art exhibitions from UFV’s artistic community, as they represent the talent at the university.
“This is inspiring — the themes you’ve drawn on, the creative ways you’ve explained and connected them,” he said.
Dean of arts Jacqueline Nolte noted the fitting choice of the word “interosculate,” as graduation means moving forward to form new connections.
“It’s very appropriate. Many of you are thinking about the kinds of territory and the places you’re going to be situating yourselves in next,” she said.
The Interosculate exhibit will run from March 6 to 24 in B136.
