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Art

Guadalupe Maravilla Transforms a School Bus into an Immersive Installation for Sound-Based Healing

May 25, 2023

Grace Ebert

A chrome and silver school bus with spiritual and sculptural details

“Mariposa Relámpago” (2023), mixed media, approximately 13 × 8.5 × 35 feet. All images by GLR Estudio Gerardo & Eduardo Lopez, courtesy of the artist and P·P·O·W, New York, © Guadalupe Maravilla, shared with permission

Chrome plating, fringe made of humble kitchen cutlery, illuminated chandeliers, and symbolic sculptures of flora and fauna adorn a school bus parked at the ICA Watershed in the Boston Harbor Shipyard. The elaborately retrofitted vehicle is the largest project to-date by Guadalupe Maravilla and the latest addition to his Disease Thrower series.

Born out of the artist’s traumatic experience immigrating as an unaccompanied minor and suffering from colon cancer as an adult, the ongoing body of work evinces the healing power of sound and vibration. Titled “Mariposa Relámpago,” or lightning butterfly, the new work has had several lives before making its way to Boston: the bus was first used for transporting students in the U.S., then sent to the artist’s native El Salvador, and finally ended up in his studio where it underwent its current transformation.

 

The front of a chrome and silver school bus with spiritual and sculptural details, including Mayan inspired sculptures and a model of human anatomy

Detail of “Mariposa Relámpago” (2023), mixed media, approximately 13 × 8.5 × 35 feet

Fastened to the vehicle’s body are several objects Maravilla found while retracing the 3,000-mile route he traveled as an eight-year-old to reunite with his parents, who had fled the country’s civil war. Included are references to Mayan cosmology and indigenous practices, spiritual emblems, and more contemporary imagery of disease and medicine, including a model of human anatomy resting atop the hood. Gongs and other tonal objects suspend from the sides, which Maravilla rings during his ritualistic sound baths. These sessions, which he’s hosted specifically for undocumented immigrants and those dealing with cancer, are known to reduce stress, anxiety, and tension that can worsen the pain of illness and injury.

Also in the exhibition at the Watershed are smaller paintings, scale models, and Disease Thrower sculptures made of mixed natural and synthetic materials that similarly reflect the artist’s exploration of displacement and recovery. Immersive and totemic, the works are part of the artist’s effort “to confront trauma in order to heal.”

Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago is on view through September 4, with two sound baths scheduled for June 10 and August 13.

 

A massive beetle sculpture sits on a chrome with butterknife fringe below

Detail of “Mariposa Relámpago” (2023), mixed media, approximately 13 × 8.5 × 35 feet

A metallic crocodile head juts off the side of a school bus

Detail of “Mariposa Relámpago” (2023), mixed media, approximately 13 × 8.5 × 35 feet

Two detail images, on the left, the steps of a bus with Mayan-inspired sculpture and cutlery fringe, on the right, a floor and spoon fringe

Detail of “Mariposa Relámpago” (2023), mixed media, approximately 13 × 8.5 × 35 feet

Visitors walk inside a chrome and silver school bus with spiritual and sculptural details

“Mariposa Relámpago” (2023), mixed media, approximately 13 × 8.5 × 35 feet

Guadalupe Maravilla sits on a chrome and silver school bus with spiritual and sculptural details

The artist in “Mariposa Relámpago” (2023), mixed media, approximately 13 × 8.5 × 35 feet

A wide aluminum sculpture with a gong at the top center sits on the floor

“Disease Thrower #14” (2021), cast aluminum, steel tubing, assorted welded details, 86 × 143 × 79 inches

 

 

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Art Colossal Craft Photography

‘At the Precipice’ Emphasizes the Role of Emotion, Tactility, and the Senses in Understanding the Climate Crisis

May 23, 2023

Grace Ebert

An abstract installation with vibrant components spread across a wall

Nathalie Miebach, “Build Me a Platform”

How does it feel to inhabit an irreversibly damaged planet? An exhibition opening at the Design Museum of Chicago this summer brings together works by ten artists and collectives that answer this question through data, color, tactility, and material.

Curated by Colossal, At the Precipice: Responses to the Climate Crisis considers physical and emotional reactions in the era of environmental disaster and emphasizes how art can offer an accessible entry point into such an overwhelming and dire emergency. Varying in medium and methodology, the works included explore several of the most urgent issues affecting the world today.

The Tempestry Project returns to the early Common Era to visualize how rapidly our climate has changed in the last few centuries alone, while Luftwerk and Zaria Forman consider the impacts of a warming world on glaciers and arctic regions. Morel Doucet, Nathalie Miebach, and Migwa Nthiga are concerned with the increasing intensity of weather events and subsequent forced migration, and Jean Shin and Chris Pappan look to shifts in rivers and access to water sources. Selva Aparicio questions loss, remains, and acts of remembrance, while Redemptive Plastics offers a localized and scalable solution to waste.

At the Precipice runs from July 14 to October 30.  We’ll be announcing talks, workshops, and other programming in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for details.

 

Help Us Knit a Century of Chicago Weather!

As part of the exhibition, the Design Museum of Chicago has generously kickstarted a Chicago Tempestry Collection, which will use twelve knitted works to highlight changes in the local weather patterns during the last 120 years. Anyone interested in creating a tempestry—a tapestry depicting daily temperatures—to be added to the collection and displayed at the museum can purchase a kit on the project’s site.

 

 

Two ceramic busts, one covered in botanicals, the other coral and fish

Morel Doucet, “Black Maiden in Veil of Midnight” (left) and “Olokun” (right). Images courtesy of the artist and Galerie Myrtis

Ice breaks on top of a body of water

Zaria Forman, still from “Overview: 12 Miles of Lincoln Sea in the Arctic Ocean, North of Greenland”

Three warriors stand half-submerged in a lake

Migwa Nthiga, “The Warriors Of The North”

A vibrant weaving of synthetic flowers hangs in a gallery

Selva Aparicio, “Our Garden Remains”

 

 



Art

Spikes, Interlocked Rings, and Bold Bulges Sprout from Megan Bogonovich’s Otherworldly Ceramic Botanicals

May 18, 2023

Grace Ebert

Two otherworldly botanical sculptures

Photo by Cooper Dodds. All images © Megan Bogonich, courtesy of Kishka Gallery & Library, shared with permission

“There is a tree on my road that has been cut very strangely to accommodate a power line, and I think about that tree a lot,” says Megan Bogonovich, who envisions the otherworldly potential of human touch on the environment through playful, botanical sculptures.

Based in Norwich, Vermont, Bogonovich recognizes nature’s immense capability for adaptation and strength in seemingly inhospitable spaces. “The whole dandelion growing out of a pavement crack thing,” she says. Her works embody transformation and abundant growth, and unusual colors, shapes, and textures arise in surreal combinations. With bulbous bases, spiked protrusions, and interlocked petals, the works imagine “the batty possibilities of what could be growing in the universe or what might be the first thing to sprout up after an environmental disaster.”

Rooted in play and the “ceaseless goofiness” of reproduction, the sculptures evolve throughout a lengthy process. Bogonovich begins by hand-building small geometric and organic forms like cones, tubes, ovoids, and textured patches made with drilled holes, cuts, and everyday objects like buttons, which she then casts in plaster to make a mold. “If I cast 30 molds one day, by the next day I have a set of slip-cast tinkertoy-type parts that I can alter and bend or duplicate. It’s a lot of labored build-up to get to a point where I can work spontaneously and impulsively with a material that would otherwise want planning,” she says. 

 

An otherworldly botanical sculpture with open flowers and one large head on the left

Photo by Cooper Dodds

These malleable forms are then fired and readied for glazing, a slow, meticulous process that involves several layers and bouts in the kiln at varying temperatures. “The sculptures are matte white when they first come out of the kiln. I let a lot of pieces build up before I start glazing,” Bogonovich says. “I get used to being surrounded by ghost flowers, so when the tide changes to color it feels like a big shift in the studio.” Like nature, glazing is unpredictable, and the pastel pinks, bold oranges, and mottled hues add a whimsical, playful element to the works. “I live in the woods in Vermont, and at this time of year, there is so much green. It’s nice to imagine bright yellow tree trunks or hot pink maple leaves,” she says. 

Bogonovich works with Kishka Gallery & Library, where she recently held a solo show, and has sculptures on view through May 20 at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York. Find more of her pieces on her site and Instagram.

 

An otherworldly botanical sculpture with a flower and two orange orbs near the base

Photo by Cooper Dodds

Two otherworldly botanical sculptures

Photo by Cooper Dodds

Four photos, each of a single otherworldly botanical sculpture

Photos by Megan Bogonovich

Spikes on the left and a glimmering flower on the right of a surreal botanical sculpture

Photo by Cooper Dodds

A group of otherworldly botanical sculptures

Photo by Chad Finer

 

 



Art

Through Trompe L’oeil Bronze, Prune Nourry Fuses Human Anatomy and Arboreal Roots

May 16, 2023

Grace Ebert

A figurative sculpture that appears like roots or veins stands in a gallery

“Atys (3).” Photo by Annik Wetter. All images © Prune Nourry, shared with permission

At the end of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s baroque opera Atys, the titular character is transformed into a tree. This metamorphosis, the result of a spell cast by an agitated goddess, secures Atys’ Earth-bound fate, melding human and plant life into a single body.

French artist Prune Nourry draws on this mythological allegory in a series that visualizes the hybrid form. Standing several feet tall to be lifelike or larger, a trio of bronze figures emerges through intricate networks mimicking both veins and branches, “fractal shapes that we can find in different scales in nature,” the artist says. Each sculpture references the form’s roots in operatic performance, and with the help of Béatrice Algazi, the smooth metal was painted in a trompe l’oeil style so that the works appear as if made of rope, used frequently in stage rigging. This illusory material also alludes to the connection between the infinitely large and infinitely small, a concept often described in the framework of string theory.

Nourry, who lives and works between New York and Paris, has long been interested in the body and the way it interacts with the environment. She recently completed a massive public work featuring a pregnant mother embedded in the land, and earlier projects include anatomical sculptures that similarly connect vein and branch. In her ongoing In Vitro series that began back in 2010, for example, Nourry uses laboratory glass to create delicate, sprawling renditions of human lungs and bodies. As a whole, her practice “questions the notion of balance and the ethical issues attached to it: the body and healing process, the dangerous demographic imbalance due to (the) selection of babies’ sex in some countries, the ecosystem, and (the) interdependence between living species,” a statement says.

Last year, the artist collaborated on a performance of Atys, and you can see the massive rope installation she created for that production in the video below. Find more of her corporeal projects on Instagram.

 

A figurative sculpture that appears like roots or veins stands atop a pedestal outdoors

“Atys” at Assemblee Nationale. Photo by Laurent Edeline

A detail of figurative sculpture that appears like roots or veins stands in a gallery

Detail of “Atys (1).” Photo by Annik Wetter

A glass sculpture of lungs that appears like roots or veins hangs on a gallery wall

“Fractal Lungs” (2019), lab glass, 50 x 60 x 25 centimeters. Photo by Bertrand Huet Tutti

Three figurative sculptures that appear like roots or veins stand in a gallery

“Atys.” Photo by Annik Wetter

A glass figurative sculpture that appears like roots or veins hangs on a gallery wall

“River Woman” (2019), borosilicate glass, 195 x 75 x 20 centimeters. Photo by Bertrand Huet Tutti

A detail of a glass figurative sculpture that appears like roots or veins hangs on a gallery wall

Detail of “River Woman” (2019), borosilicate glass, 195 x 75 x 20 centimeters. Photo by Bertrand Huet Tutti

 

 



Art Craft Design

Supple Patterns Illuminate Bold Volumes in Oliver Chalk’s Sophisticated Wooden Vessels

May 16, 2023

Kate Mothes

A carved wooden vessel.

Detail of a vessel from the ‘Pathways’ series. All images © Oliver Chalk, shared with permission

Hewn from solid hunks of found timber, Oliver Chalk’s vessels (previously) embrace the natural grain and gradients of different types of wood to reveal voluminous functional sculptures. Using remnants of fallen trees like ash, cypress, maple, and cherry, Chalk hand-carves bold ribs and lines redolent of contours on topographic maps. He takes cues from the distinctive characteristics of each piece of wood, responding to the specimen’s unique texture, hardness, hue, and innate patterns. Maple burl, for example, which is a growth in the tree’s bark that creates dense, swirling, eye-like motifs, led to an elegant piece peppered with small holes and knots.

Chalk’s work is included in the group exhibition Earth Materials at Gallery 57 in Arundel, West Sussex, through June 10 and Spring Collection ’23 at The Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden in Ockley, Surrey. Find more on his website and on Instagram.

 

A carved wooden vessel.

Detail of a vessel from the ‘Earth Materials’ series

Nine images of carved wooden vessels.

‘Earth Materials’ collection

A carved wooden vessel.

Warped maple burl vessel

A carved wooden vessel.

Charred surface on cypress

A photo of a wooden vessel being made in the studio.

Cypress vessel in progress

Two details of wooden vessels' textures.

Left: Sycamore vessel. Right: Detail of textured ash vessel

Two wooden vessels.

Vessels “One” and “Two” in the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden Spring/Summer 2023 collection

A carved wooden vessel.

Cherry vessel

A carved wooden vessel.

Ash vessel

A carved wooden vessel.

Detail of vessel “One” in the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden Spring/Summer 2023 collection

Wood being turned in the studio.

Roughing out a large cypress vessel

 

 



Art

Dancing Figures and Natural Elements Coalesce in Jonathan Hateley’s Elegant Bronze Sculptures

May 16, 2023

Kate Mothes

A bronze figurative sculpture.

“Releasing” (2016), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 67 x 58 x 50 centimeters. All images © Jonathan Hateley, shared with permission

Immersed in nature, female figures dance, reflect, and rest in Jonathan Hateley’s limber bronze sculptures. The subjects commune with their surroundings, greeting the sun or leaning into the wind and merging with patterns of foliage or lichen. “I was drawn to create a sculpture reflecting nature on the surface of the figure, which could be better highlighted with the use of colour,” he tells Colossal. “This has evolved over time from the shapes of leaves to fingerprints and cherry blossoms to plant cells.”

Before he began an independent studio practice, Hateley worked for a commercial workshop that produced sculptures for television, theatre, and film, often with rapid turnaround. Over time, he was attracted to slowing down and emphasizing experimentation, finding inspiration in regular walks in nature. Although he’s focused on the human figure for more than a decade, he originally resisted that style. “I began with wildlife, and that began to evolve into organic forms with details illustrated onto the sculptures,” he tells Colossal. Between 2010 and 2011, he completed a remarkable 365-day project of tiny bas-reliefs that were eventually composed onto a kind of monolith.

 

A bronze figurative sculpture.

“All From One” (2014), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 111 x 71 x 40 centimeters. Photo by Tea and Morphine

Hateley initially began working with bronze using the cold-cast method—also known as bronze resin—a process that involves mixing bronze powder and resin together to create a kind of paint, then applying it to the inside of a mold made from the original clay form. This naturally led to foundry casting, or lost-wax, in which an original sculpture can be reproduced in metal. The initial design and sculpting process can take up to four months from start to finish, followed by casting and hand-finishing, which usually takes around three months to complete.

Right now, Hateley is working on a series based on a photo shoot with a West End dancer, a reference that helps him achieve the anatomical details of extended torsos and limbs. “The first of those sculptures has a figure reaching upwards, hopefully towards better times,” he says. “I saw her like a plant growing out of a seed and eventually flowering, (with) oblong, cell-like shapes gradually merging into circular reds and oranges.” And currently, he is modeling a ballet pose in clay, evoking “a person in a calm restful state, like she is floating in a calm sea, thus becoming the sea.”

Hateley will have work at Affordable Art Fair in Hong Kong with Linda Blackstone Gallery and will be included in Art & Soul at The Artful Gallery in Surrey and Summer Exhibition 2023 at Talos Art Gallery in Wiltshire from June 1 to 30. He will also have work with Pure at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival from July 3 to 10. Find more on the artist’s website, and follow on Instagram for updates and peeks into his process.

 

Two images of figurative bronze sculptures.

Left: “Sunrise” (2019), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 92 x 26 x 26 centimeters. Right: “Sunset” (2019), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 56 x 28 x 20 centimeters. Photo by Graham Dash

A figurative bronze sculpture.

“Beginnings” (2018), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 97 x 59 x 19 centimeters. Photo by Steve Poole

A figurative bronze sculpture.

“Formed” (2018), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 56 x 39 x 16 centimeters

A figurative bronze sculpture.

“Imprinted” (2020), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 39 x 33 x 21 centimeters

A figurative bronze sculpture.

“Moonlight” (2021), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 83 x 59 x 20 centimeters

A figurative bronze sculpture.

“Sleeping Stone” (2022), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 17 x 37 x 17 centimeters

A figurative bronze sculpture.

“Winter Facing” (2019), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 48 x 32 x 20 centimeters

A figurative bronze sculpture.

“Blighty” (2017), produced in hand-painted bronze (edition of 9) and hand-painted bronze resin (edition of 12), 44 x 47 x 15 centimeters

 

 

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