The art of awareness Oftentimes, words just won’t do. Assistant Professor of Art Michelle Acuff’s work embodies and provokes a dialogue between art and environment. Whitman Magazine: How does your art speak about environ- Walla Walla is a unique place. How does Whitman’s location feed mentalism, environmental concerns or sense of place? your artistic vision and the visions of students? Michelle Acuff: In my work I try to articulate a sense of how I think Walla Walla and Whitman are both places where one can confusing our environmental predicament is, how complex, and gain some perspective. There’s a lot of space here and a lot of quite honestly, how overwhelming and somewhat unable to grasp light. The landscape itself is visually stunning and diverse.on it truly is. I think this is useful to the extent that it acknowledges closer inspection, there are many intricacies worth attending to. complicities and difficult emotions, and the ways in which ratio- For example: the stunning emerald green of the wheat mono crop nality isn’t always a sufficient tool for navigating every aspect of all around – it’s a sight to behold and much is made of its obvious this cultural moment. In my work I offer up visual/material sce- beauty – yet, chemically, environmentally, it’s also emblematic narios that offer viewers an opportunity to engage both sides of of a much larger and dangerous situation. their brain in the matter. Do you bring this interplay between environment and artist into What are you working on now? the classroom? I’m continuing my work with deer imagery, specifically a piece I do. Next semester my Intermediate/Advanced Sculpture class in which I create individual porcelain copies of all of the bones will take many cues from a book/catalog of an exhibition titled of a deer skeleton I collected from Mill Creek Road. But I always “Badlands,” curated by the Massachusetts Museum of Modern use my sabbatical to open to new ideas and paths. I did a lot of Art. It showcases many ways artists are dealing with and under- video and photographically based works during my recent resi- standing landscape and our ecological impacts newly. Student dencies. And this summer I am working with a student,Paul projects will take their thematic and physical shape in response Cathcart ’14,on a Perry Grant that will put us in Portland,ore., to these ideas. In addition to this course I’ll also be team-teaching and its surrounding area collaborating on and rethinking anoth- a course with Aaron Bobrow-Strain in politics. The course is ti- er deer video piece I started last summer. tled Raw Geographies and deals with the intersection of critical social theory and art practice. Its subject is the relentless making How does art make people aware of environmental concerns and and remaking of diverse spaces – from the built environments of sustainability? Can you give me some specific examples? cities, to the geographies of “natural” landscape, to the often in- oh so many artists are directing their attention to these issues. visible, but still highly material, routes in which migrants, one of my favorite examples is Marc Dion’s piece “Neukum Vi- information, money and ideas flow. Its focus is on artists, activ- varium” at the Seattle Sculpture Park. It consists of the trunk of ists and academics who illuminate, contest or resist these spatial a large fallen fir tree that is kept in a greenhouse-like structure processes through performance, site specific installations and under strictly regulated water and light conditions so that it may other means that might be called “art.” There has been a ton of continue to foster new life as it goes through its many decades- interest in the class and we have a long waitlist. long process of decomposition. In fact, the piece itself looks much more like science than art, and many people don’t even know it’s Are students exploring this dialogue between nature and art? actually a sculpture. It creates a dialogue between the two cul- yes, I have found the dovetailing between these two spheres to tural paradigms and that leads in really interesting directions. be of great conceptual interest to students. It’s thematically as old as it gets – think of Stonehenge or even depictions of the Garden you were invited to two artist residencies, Playa in southern or- of Eden – and yet also has a very contemporary resonance. egon and Brush Creek Ranch in eastern Wyoming. Tell us a little There’s a lot of interest on this campus in how to create change about what you learned there. in the world, how to embolden our relationship with nature, so Both places were simultaneously extravagant and remote; unre- much so that it has filtered into my own work and now my cur- strained in the comforts and amenities they offered (individual riculum. It’s interestingly and wonderfully symbiotic. cabins and work studios, delicious food, situated in the heart of vast and iconic Western landscapes) and remote in the sense that — David Brauhn they were very distant from the non-natural world. So I spent a lot of face-time with rocks and rivers and wind and amazing vis- tas. It was pretty nourishing and definitely affected my work. The landscapes were hard not to respond to. July 2012 33
Whitman Magazine July 2012
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