What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1475959
"It shows this history subdued and held back in a variety of ways. (Through the image of the dress) it's looming over, like kudzu, scary and powerful, important and strong, but also pink, frilly, wiggly and quilted." Baskin himself has a degree in sculpture, owned a gallery with his spouse and previously worked at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, but he had never showcased a neon piece until he started working with Sarah Turner. Her resulting installation is a bathtub with a reflection of water and a seed hanging down from the ceiling — all crafted from neon. "Neon is so particular and scientific, it's amazing," Baskin says. Turner is "showing this private, vulnerable space, a bathtub, but showing it in neon is very public." The constantly buzzing, moving nature of neon goes against traditional, still and relaxing elements of baths too, making it a work with enough contradicting elements to allow the audience plenty of space to drawn their own conclusions about it. "Neon is crazy in its conception," Turner says. "The process of making it is dangerous and difficult. I stand patiently all day, trying to literally bend glass to my will in a fire." Turner began working on "Bathed in Light" about a year ago. Some of the Elevate artists create work specifically for the 21C installation, while others choose pieces that they've already completed. In Turner's case, the idea had been swirling around her brain for a while, and Baskin gave her the perfect opportunity to let it out. Turner uses techniques to pull neon off the wall and often looks for ways to form relationships between light and the body. She thinks of "Bathed in Light" as a sort of portal. "The bath is something you go into one way and come out another," she says, speaking of it as a place of contemplation that is quiet but maybe emotionally loaded. "It's an in-between, just like its contents, an abstraction of cycles: intos, coming-out-ofs and in-betweens." The installation has several parts: the bath, the water, the seed and the feet. Turner hopes viewers will hone in on the feet because they are the "only solid form that ground you into reality" and that walking away, the overall effect will provoke some unknown within them. "For me, this artwork is talking about public versus private and self care and comfort versus what it means to not have that," Baskin says. "You can take your background and create the meaning for yourself." Linda Lopez's ceramics sit, aquarium-like, in a space painted light purple, while the works themselves vary greatly in color, texture, sheen, size and shape. One on the far left has something like fingers, a funny, wacky object, Baskin says. Others look similar to plants or animals. "But it's still this object, this entire world, that's created through simple shapes and forms, and I absolutely love that," Baskin says. Lopez grew up in a bilingual household where words could often be hybridized —a little of this language, a little of that — and Baskin says that's what she's doing with her artwork, creating a sort of visual language. "Her use of color is spectacular," he says. "They have a language of their own, a playfulness and a sadness to them." As guests come through and take notice of the local artists' work, Baskin hopes that it will elevate their experience at the museum hotel as much as it boosts the artists' careers. Each one is at a different place in their journey, with some more experienced and others just beginning. Success, he says, could come in many forms, whether viewers buy or appreciate the work or the artists simply enjoy what they're making. AUGUST 14-20, 2022 WHAT'S UP! 5 21C Continued From Page 3 Linda Lopez's spectacularly colorful ceramic sculptures have a language of their own, a playfulness and a sadness about them, says curator Danny Baskin. "They all move on their own and have their own life." (Courtesy Photo/Stephen Ironside for 21C) COVER STORY