Artist Statements
Elmira College Art Faculty Show 2023
George Waters Gallery
Chris Longwell
Three Porcelain Bowls
Blue Celadon Reduction Fired, 2400°F 2023
My strongest influences have predominantly come from the natural world. Some of my glazes are formulated to flow in the kiln and move over, around, and collect in the textures. I liken this to the way water moves in a stream around rocks and undulations. The speckles in the glaze come from sand collected from the beaches of Alaska’s Cook Inlet. The brown sand gets its darker color from heavy minerals derived from glaciers both present and extinct. Iron bits in the sand stain the clay and bleed into the glaze when it becomes fluid during the firing. The textured surface of two of these bowls comes from a stamp I created from a fossil I found along the Chemung River. I pressed the stamp against the wet surface of the clay to create the texture. The fossil and the stamp are displayed on the pedestal along with the bowls.
Please feel free to pick up these bowls and my other functional works. I want your experience to be both visual and tactile.
Jan Kather
“...my subject is drawn from the history of the past, wherein we see how nations have risen from the Savage state to that of Power & Glory & then fallen & become extinct...”
Thomas Cole, in a letter to his patron Luman Reed, about the idea for his first large-scale allegorical series The Course of Empire, 1833-36. Oil on canvas, The New-York Historical Society.
Two hundred years ago artists such as Thomas Cole were sounding the alarm about the imminent destruction humans were bequeathing to future civilizations. Little did Cole know his prediction about the human desire to harness and control nature would result in what we know today as Climate Change.
The artwork I present in this show runs the gamut from poster, to puzzle, to the embroidered cyanotype wall hanging, to video. The “Periodic Table” metal print is recycled, i.e., being exhibited with a new perspective. In 2015 James Randall quizzed me when I exhibited the piece. “Jan, do you know how outdated the periodic table in your artwork is?” His question foreshadowed my current thoughts about Climate Change: our thinking as a society is outdated. New strategies of saving the earth, as we know it, must be implemented.
Communicating about Climate Change is often met with indifference. No one wants to be told that their way of life must change, especially those who are “well off.” I take inspiration from Daniel Quinn’s 1995 novel Ishmael when the main character, a gorilla, advises his pupil:
“…people need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them.”
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, New York: Bantam Books, 1992 p243-244
The pieces I am exhibiting acknowledge that although we are grieving over a perceived loss of our way of life, we can’t afford to succumb to this negativity. How do we do that? The message becomes more optimistic if we see that the solution is to change our way of thinking, or our unspoken “mythology of being.”
We can list actions to promote the sustainability of our planet, but it starts with the change in the way we see ourselves in this world. Ishmael suggests that the problem is the BELIEF that the world belongs to man rather than man belongs to the world.
Can we revision ourselves as belonging to the world? Let the conversation begin.
Aaron Kather
On Collage
The French word “collage,” (literally “a pasting,”) entered the English language in 1919 to describe an emerging art form where paper and other materials were pasted onto a rigid support. Twentieth-century artists from virtually every major post-Cubist art movement made collages, using the medium to illustrate narratives, to make political statements, to bring attention to environmental causes, to hold a mirror up to popular culture, to critique capitalism, and to create new aesthetic styles. While I am interested in all of these approaches, I prefer making aesthetically driven, abstract collages in the tradition of artists such as the Dada artist Kurt Schwitters and the abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell, over the imagery-based styles of artists like the surrealist Max Ernst, the pop artist James Rosenquist, or the conceptual artist John Stezaker.
I gravitate towards abstraction not because I dislike beautiful images, but because beautiful images feel too precious to alter. Someone else’s imagery must undergo a certain degree of deconstruction before it can be transformed into a work of art that I can honestly consider my own. To make an abstract collage, I begin by mining magazines, newspapers, flyers, and other printed paper materials for shapes, colors, lines, patterns, or textures. Playing with these elements becomes a form of drawing: the gesture of the artist’s hand can be seen in the rough edge of torn paper, or in the smooth edge of paper cut with scissors; shaping each scrap of paper becomes an exercise in mark-making; and moving each piece around before gluing it down is a way of creating compositional studies, akin to thumbnail sketching. Sometimes I use my collages as inspiration for paintings, drawings, or digital artworks, but at other times I am content to let them exist for their own sake.
Working with whatever disposable materials can be found freely is an important aspect of the collages I have included in this show, for two reasons. First, the limiting nature of this type of material forces responsive and inventive thinking that starkly contrasts with the overwhelming nature of a blank canvas and limitless resources. The second reason relates to Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote that “the medium is the message,” a notion that has become a mantra for the contemporary art world. By repurposing materials otherwise destined for a landfill, collage becomes a protest against the wastefulness encouraged by consumer culture.
Derek ChalfantThe creative work I produce is developed through fabricating objects that are metal, wood, stone, or appropriated, and casting (bronze, aluminum, glass, chocolate, wax, resin) while transforming my ideas and experiences into physical realities. I have an interest in the orchestration of a variety of materials and search for contrast between the organic and geometric, the abstract and representational, and the raw and refined. Themes, sources, and objects employed in my work range from scientific and historical facts to global contemporary issues. I recurrently forge in layers of meaning that can interconnect to my own personal history, which gives me an ancestral connection.
Many of the forms I create are objects of implied utility, security and protection, which are used as metaphors for our psychological behavior, and for the phenomenology of the body. Architectural furnishing and structures such as a nightstand, table and house allow me to explore specific polar states that are relevant to the structure and also to the personal psyche such as: large/small, inside/outside, private/public, adult/child, beginning/end, birth/death. The sculptures and installations fashioned are a means to reflect poignant elements of our society. Part of the narrative in my pieces has to do with the human condition, in particular today’s elderly and youth, as well as our social and environmental conditions.
To the viewer in public spaces, I hope to engage and reflect my inquiries and interests related to the human spirit and sensitivity toward all life forms. It’s my desire for my sculptural work to be thought provoking as I attempt to create a richness of meaning with the ambiguities, enigmas, multiple layers and conflations of both form and content. Ultimately, I am responding to some my interests (and those of others), research, emotions and environment while questioning, and examining, the world in which we live.
Eat steel, water, glass
This landscape table/bench is a place to get away from the computer, phone and TV. Throughout my life, I have great memories of sitting around the table and having conversations while enjoying home cooked meals. The dish, which is made from a farm tilling disc, contain one of our basic necessities. If kept outdoors, ultimately the rain and elements will reclaim this piece through corrosion returning it to the landscape.
Life Preserver #1 upcycled denim and life jacket, bronze
Life Preserver #2 upcycled leather and life jacket, bronze
Life Preserver #3 upcycled leather and life jacket, bronze
These three pieces were inspired by various forms for aid and assistance that were, and still are, given to Ukraine since the invasion of Russian forces. All materials are sewn from used leather jackets and denim jeans.
Nightstands cherry, wenge, granite, stainless steel
These are made from sustainably sourced wood and supplied by stewards of the forest, Irion Lumber, Wellsboro, PA.
Cycling-Cyclical... upcycled tricycles, recycled rubber
These are fabricated from used tricycles and discarded clothing circular display racks. Every day as humans we are emulating nature, as we repeat various routines, rituals and cycles.
Memories amboyna burl, memory cards, limestone, upcycled leather
This brain-shaped wood burl has the capacity to contain thousands of images and bits of information that can be stored indefinitely unlike the human brain which ultimately dies.
Fishouse spalted maple, aluminum
Bluefin Tuna and Bigeye Tuna are two types of tuna that are endangered due to overfishing. This piece pays homage to the tuna and is a tribute to my father, a military veteran, who served in the United States Navy. He taught me how to swim, fish and make some delicious tuna fish salad!