Statement Petersilge

So, first off, I’m sorry this is late. I got distracted with the show opening yesterday and this post just slipped my mind. I hope this can still function for points.

My work in this class ended up focusing around the concept of beauty and seduction, and how it can be made dissonant when slightly altered. At the beginning of the term, we watched an art21 segment by Josiah McElheny, and a particular sentence resonated with me, and became a strong influence in how I worked with glass. He describes beauty as being “about a kind of recognition of or sympathy to a kind of order or set of ideas or a set of relationships.”

With this in mind, I set out to make work that questioned that order he speaks of; to have some elements align with our ideas of beauty, but have others question or distort that assertion. The method of the “exquisite corpse” was rich ground for me to explore with the ideas I had in mind, and ended up with an en memoriam piece. The beauty and preservation we associate with our dead is a working example of how our order of beauty can be disturbed. The deer skull I created also reads to this, taking what is normally a trophy item used in taxidermy and hunting, disguising it in a seductive veil of metallic red glass. Last but not least, my gummy bears read to the experience of the expired gummy bear, riddled with dirt and dust from handling and neglect, while still containing a colorful, seductive veneer that entices you to look past the dirt. This is meant to engage the thought of how we as humans look for order, and will attempt to create it in its absence.