Fault Lines
Studio Place Arts – Barre, Vermont – May 14–June 29, 2019 – studioplacearts.com
When entering the exhibit, Fault Lines, at Studio Place Arts Gallery, visitors are confronted by Tuyen My Nguyen’s Threadbarrier, a half-transparent wall of earth-toned threads. Nguyen’s piece is the perfect poster child for Fault Lines, which invited artists to explore the fractures at many levels in our contemporary world.
Clay hands reach through Threadbarrier to the opposite wall where the 16 tall figures of Susan Wilson’s Awakenings hang. Wilson writes, People are on the move…Seeking has hands…Reaching has arms…Hope has feet. In A House Divided (Vestiges of the Reconstruction) by Rob Millard-Mendez, is a sculpture of a naked, athletic Uncle Sam wearing his signature top hat. He balances weakly on narrow ankles, atop a red and blue map of the United States, holding a drone in each hand.
Torin Porter, Vive Ensemble, 2018, steel, 3 x 4 ½ x 4 ½”. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Trumptych by Hannah Morris, is a series of three embroidery hoops with figures of Trump as the animating character, I am a little teapot…Tip me over and pour me out. Teresa Celemin offers visitors an opportunity to participate in the Manbaby Project and includes an album of photographs of where the Manbaby stickers have been affixed.
Pria Cambio’s Dysfunctional Blanket in red, white and blue strikes a more personal note. Initiated after a loss, the five-sided shapes are imperfectly joined, including large gaps. Cambio likens this to the need for compromise, in both the private and public sphere.
Both Ann Young and Torin Porter offer work that attests to the importance of coming together. Young’s painting, Blood Brothers, depicts three men of different faiths in an active, animated discussion. In Vive Ensemble, Porter presents a steel sculpture of seven figures facing inwards, forming a circular dome with heads joined at the center. Their closed circle could also simultaneously be excluding others. Conflict resolution depends on the common space of overlapping circles to produce common ground.
Fault Lines offers a varied and fascinating array of artistic responses to contemporary humanitarian and political dilemmas. This is a timely and provocative exhibit organized by one of the most consistently innovative galleries in Vermont.