As vacations wind down, it's time to reflect on summer experiences, including those found in art.
Montserrat College of Art will present its fall gallery, "Many Kinds of Nothing," featuring national and international artists, throughout the coming months.
"They're small scale. You have to come physically close to them and draw in close. They say poetic and elegant things, but only if you slow down. Not every viewer will, but that's the goal — that you would slow down and have the intimate experience with that artist," said Shana Dumont, assistant director and curator of Montserrat's gallery.
Artists Liz Sweibel, Roni Horn, Nancy Murphy Spicer and Dan Senn will be featured; their minimal mediums are wire sculpture, still-water photography, a hanging drawing and musical art, respectively.
"Nancy Murphy Spicer has a hanging drawing that consists of 50 pins and a large black rope. Pins are placed in the wall in a series of loops. It looks two-dimensional, but it occupies space, making it three-dimensional," said Dumont, who has her master's degree in art history from Boston University.
Spicer's artwork is black and will be hung on a newly painted white wall.
Dan Senn, a sound and installation artist from Oregon, made an instrument with short and long tubes and paper that has a sub-audio frequency, which pushes the paper up to create a vibration. He attached 16 tubes to different spores to all create an unpredictable sound.
"It doesn't sound like a rock band. Imagine 16 drummers lightly tapping on top of a tube sometimes very quickly, sometimes in short spurts," he said.
Senn said he started to make this unique audio art after he took courses in ceramic sculpture and music composition at University of Illinois' graduate school, but this will be his second installation since he developed an original model with four columns.
"It's funny, when I make these things I'm only thinking about everything but what it might mean. When I look at it, I say, 'This is ridiculous,'" he said.
"Meditation is the thing that I wanted all of the work to have in common. I didn't want to attach it to any one religion, because a lot of different religions use meditation. There's a balance between your moving body and your questioning mind, and that's what meditation does," Dumont said, "I'm interested in how some kinds of art can stimulate a meditative state of mind that changes the pace of how you relate to the world and see the world in a different way."
She said that since Senn's instrument doesn't produce traditional music, people will question it, and those viewers will become contemplative.
"It's nice to be combining my work with other art," said Senn, who often has solo exhibits, "It should be quite beautiful dealing with very simple materials."
Pairing nicely with her dual art and English undergraduate degree from Colby College in Maine, Dumont has recently completed a 16-page catalog with an essay detailing each artwork and why she chose to include it in this gallery, which will accompany text on the wall that names the art submissions.
A reception will be held Sept. 4 to celebrate the completion of the artwork and to welcome the community to view it. There will also be a reception for Montserrat alum, Christopher Broughton, in the Carol Schlosberg Alumni Gallery simultaneously.
The catalog will be available during the reception and throughout the exhibit's run time.
According to Dumont, the reception will take place a few weeks into the gallery's opening due to freshman orientation activities, summer vacation plans and the start of the fall semester.
This exhibit will be open to the 275 undergraduate students at Montserrat College of Art, as well as to the general public.
