ENTERTAINMENT

Emerging trends at Grounds for Sculpture

RALPH J. BELLANTONI
CORRESPONDENT

A pair of recently unveiled exhibits at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton provides visitors with a sneak peek into the future of sculpture. Two of the facility’s interior exhibition halls showcase a bevy of works by established, emerging, and student artists allied with the International Sculpture Center.

“Disruption” occupies the Museum Building with 18 innovative creations by members of the Texas Sculpture Group, the Chicago Sculpture International, and the Pacific Rim Sculpture Group, three national chapters of the International Sculpture Center. The selected works interpret the manifold causes and effects of disruptive forces in the world today, whether they be technological or climatic, personal or global, brutal conflicts or mass migrations.

The connection between sculptures and theme may appear obvious or tenuous, and the display presents a study in contrasts. Nikki Renee Anderson’s ceramic “Dribble Portraits” bulge with a gravid, fleshy fragility, while Kurt Dyrhaug’s cast iron “Tonka Buster” hunkers with a menacing elegance. Maru Hoeber’s porcelain “Flight” alludes to the precarious plight of seaborne refugees, while Victoria Fuller’s mixed media assemblage “In My Backyard” makes oblique reference to threatening environmental disruptions--a recurrent topic in her oeuvre.

Fuller’s oddly alluring construction emanates a cryptic impression of functionality by consolidating gas pipes, a garden hose, cubes and blocks, a beehive facsimile, and an Amanita Muscaria mushroom dangling from a chain.

“This decorative and charming fungus is known to be toxic and hallucinatory--Siberians boil and drink it to get roaring drunk--yet studies are being conducted on its medicinal value,” said Fuller. “Nature has healing properties we can utilize, yet exploitation can break natural cycles, forever losing precious life forms.”

The cognitive dissonance of Fuller’s hallucinatory assemblage accentuates the ethereal minimalism of Lin McJunkin’s steel and glass composition titled “Eaarth in the Balance.” Yet the two express related concerns.

McJunkin’s work reflects her alarmed reaction to a revelation by environmentalist Bill McKibben, who stated that the chemical composition of earth’s atmosphere altered radically just within the brief period of his 54 year lifetime. McJunkin designates the changed planet “eaarth.”

“This frightening realization inspired my creation of a progression of five pate de verre glass cylinders representing the earth in various stages of disintegration,” she said. “From the primal beauty of its blue skies and lush greens on the left, to the totally dead and colorless mass second from the right.”

Yet McJunkin mollifies the work’s foreboding of disaster by punctuating the pessimistic progression with a bright note of qualified hope.

“The final cylinder,” she states, “suggests the avoidance of, or possible return from, environmental degradation with the aid of creative effort to mitigate and adjust to these human-induced changes.”

The Domestic Arts Building houses winning works from the 21st Annual Outstanding Student Achievement Awards in Contemporary Sculpture, another collaborative effort between Grounds for Sculpture and the International Sculpture Center. The show presents standout realizations by talented emerging sculptors chosen from among hundreds of art programs across the world.

The myriad works impress with their inventive exuberance, evidencing young artists enthusiastically exploring concepts, materials, and their own creative ingenuity in the plastic arts. Robert Hackett instills sentience and motility into his sinuously angular “Archway” of painted steel and plywood, while Shiyuan Xu’s organic porcelain “Tiny Things #8” convolutes delicately.

Gabriel Strader-Brown shapes thin, black, welded steel rods into a geometric jigsaw arrangement for his “Auto Canyon Parameter,” and Cosmo Whyte builds a tidal surge construction of plywood and speakers in his blaring “Wake the Town and Tell the People.”

Grounds for Sculpture offers an abundance of further thrilling art encounters throughout its 42 acres of manicured parkland, and within its many spacious galleries. The complex hosts concerts, performances, demonstrations, workshops, entertainments and more, serves tasty fare in its cafes and restaurants, and makes singular gifts and mementoes available from its museum store.

“DISRUPTION” AND “THE 21ST ANNUAL OUTSTANDING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS IN CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE”

WHERE: Grounds for Sculpture, 80 Sculptors Way, Hamilton

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays to Sundays through April 3

ADMISSION: $15, $12 seniors, $10 students (ages 6-17 or with college ID), free for children 5 and younger

INFO: 609-586-0616, www.groundsforsculpture.org