Avian Instinct - Plymouth State Unviversity Gallery

AVIAN INSTINCT

at Plymouth State University's Karl Drerup Art Gallery Until March 3rd.

Gallery Talk 5pm Feb 22.
VIP brunch 11am Feb 25.
(RSVP required)

If you enjoyed AVIAN LANGUAGE at Boston Sculptors Gallery, you saw small indoor work with a “take home” sensibility.

For AVIAN INSTINCT the work is very much more process oriented. The space is HUGE:

I arrived with a few design sketches that I had set up in my barn* and driveway, but most of the installation is being choreographed on site.

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp4LRbsZwbM

I am using four continuously running video projections onto surfaces that are attached within my wood constructed shapes. There will be three different stereo sound-scapes playing about the spacious gallery. This massive media onslaught is more gentle and subversive that I can share here. PLEASE experience this show if you can. It is unlike anything I have done, yet very much speaks of all that has come previously.

Photo Credit and HUGE KUDOS to John Hession

Professor Terry Downs, director of the Drerup Art Gallery, says that art in three dimensions can have an advantage over other art forms in achieving a purity of vision. “It is real, it is tangible, it is actual material, it is an actual object. Three dimensional art is not a depiction of something else—it is itself,” he says. “With Avian Instinct,” we experience that embodiment, where the forces of nature, life and death merge with material and structure in splendid harmony.


AVIAN INSTINCT
Andy Moerlein

ARTIST STATEMENT

In making art I follow an alchemist’s path. These protoscientists believe in a natural and symbolic unity of humanity with the cosmos. Through a combination of common elements they sought impossible results. Similarly I make sculptures of ordinary objects and events seeking extraordinary results.

I see the shapes of trees, the edges of natural and logical phenomena, the flight patterns of birds, their songs and colors, all as structures that encode a deeper communication between all things. I am a lonely man with many friends. I am an ample conversationalist with a deep silence I cannot find words for. My work is an effort to show physically what I experience. I suggest that might be a shared sensibility.

I build structures that seem familiar. I use authentic tree parts that I find eccentric, lovely, sentimental, exceptional. I use ceramic birds in abundance. They often serve as icons for myself, my family, my friends.

When speaking of inspiration I think of intuition and structure. My work lately has embodied birds because they seem so innately expressive. We mammal-human-types possess a conceit about our creative uniqueness. Considering that by evolutionary science we are no more nearly related to a bird than a stone cold lizard, I find the emotional/musical affection we project upon avian kind curious. The parallels between avian-human -- warm bodies, social complexities, and passion to communicate -- fascinate me. Birds see a kinship between our worlds and speak deeply to me personally.

A short video of me talking with students:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-eCGgHzIJU