Technology Forward Art
by Joe Thorpe
The Cape Cod Community College (4Cs) Higgins Art Gallery opened its annual faculty art show on November 14. This year, Gallery Director Nathalie Ferrier added a new spin to enhance the range of work for the show.
“The show is usually just faculty, but this year I wanted more art, more talent, more creators for fun,” said Ferrier.
There are diversified mediums presented by the artists throughout the show. Artists Andrew Ringler, Alyssa Laural Ringler and Adam Farrell all presented pieces with technological interactions. Alyssa Laural Ringler’s piece involved the viewer using their cell phones and pictures from an Instagram account set up by Ringler to fill in redacted portions of her photography.
“This work invites the viewer to be physically present yet engaged with their smartphone…As technological innovation subtly changes our behaviors, exercises like this give an opportunity to pause and reconsider how we can integrate technology more responsibly,” reads Ringler’s artist statement about her piece.
Other artists brought in large installation pieces, such as 4Cs Professor of Art and Design Scott Anderson’s piece “1896”. Anderson’s piece consists of pieces of timber he salvaged from an old mill in New Bedford that was being demolished. Anderson got permission to enter the site and retrieve materials for his art.
“I’m interested in materials like bricks and timber and their history,” said Anderson.
Anderson says the piece is to encourage us to consider humanity through his art.
“I encourage people to reflect on time in the piece itself, especially in the context of where we are as a species right now,” said Anderson. “During the Industrial Revolution, these mills in New Bedford were our economy. This timber was part of a waste product. The cost that comes with industry. In our now advanced industrial place—where the technology industry is—where does that leave nature?”
Anderson also wants people to consider the movement of self through time.
“If we’re lucky, each of us gets 70 years, maybe more, but everything has its limitations,” Anderson said.
Artist and adjunct photography instructor Elizabeth Hathon, who formerly worked as a commercial photographer in New York City, showcased her photograph of baby chickens that she named impromptu as “Farmland Series One.” Hathon says the landscape photograph of several baby chickens is to evoke a “soft, fuzzy, warm, comfortable” feeling from the viewer. She came about these baby chicks while doing commercial photography for a friend’s farm, taking pictures of the eggs her friend sells.
Hathon’s guest is her daughter Isabel Green. Green has been working as a glassblower for 12 years, ever since she was in high school. Hathon had signed her daughter up for an amateur glassblowing workshop with McDermott Glass Studio in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and Green was the only student. Green has been happily blowing glass since.
Green’s piece, dubbed “Jar of Bees”, is a departure from her usual nautical themed work.
“This ‘Jar of Bees’ is my first of what I hope to be many jars of bees!” reads Green’s artist statement. “I wanted to find a way to represent a fragile glass diorama and this led me to jarring the bees, like one would with honey. All of the components are hand blown glass made on Cape Cod.”
The exhibit is open until December 9. For more information visit the Higgins Gallery website: www.capecod.edu/higgins/.
Categories: Arts & Entertainment, Around Campus