A unique trait of Wooster’s art major is that at the end of the year, members the of college campus actually get to see what the seniors have been working on for their Independent Studies.
To showcase their projects, the seniors produce an engaging exhibit that people actually want to go and look at on their own time. Sarah Harbottle ’10 and Alice Case, ’10, present two projects that, ó while very different ó both ask the viewer to engage in conversation with the artwork.
Harbottle’s exhibit is titled “The Lens of Perception: Photography’s Effects on Environmental Issues Framing”. A double major in political science and studio art, Harbottle said she wanted to create something that was “politically related but with an element of the artistic.”
While her paper stuck more to the effects of strip mining, the artwork attempts to paint a picture of what strip mining is to different people, both those involved intimately in the process and those who only receive the eventual products of the dug-up coal.
The work is in four parts, meant to be viewed from right to left (hint: start near the main entrance of Ebert). The first is a series of seven images from a West Virginia strip mine, some of which have biological, political and scientific texts superimposed on them. Moving left is a physical representation of the why of strip-mining ó a coal products tree covered in pencils, Sweet&Low, electronic materials, medicines and dozens of other unexpected items. “A lot of the research talked about trees,” said Harbottle. “I just kept coming across it.” Further left, she creates a new landscape through systematic altering of jigsaw puzzles, and next to that through the gradual accumulation of photos into a mosaic.
On the other side of the hall, a whole different story is being told. Case’s exhibit should also be viewed starting from the front of Ebert, but that’s where the obvious similarities stop.
“I don’t know that many people named Alice,” said Case. “So the book was always special for me.” The book she’s talking about is, of course, Lewis Carroll’s novel for children, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (and tangentially, its sister, “Through the Looking Glass”). She talked about how it was her go-to book as a child, and one of the books her father read to her. Clearly it had an effect on Case, who was an extremely imaginative kid herself.
But this isn’t just an I.S. about Wonderland’s Alice. “The Face in the Looking Glass: An Examination of Self through Character Traits in Lewis Carroll’s Stories of Alice” (probably in the running for the apocryphal Longest Title Prize), takes other inspiration from Plato’s idea of the tripartite soul.
In brief, this is the idea that every person is made up of three parts: Passion, Logic and Body. Each of the three characters portrayed in Case’s exhibit represents one of these, though I won’t spoil the surprise as to which is which.
The 12 photographs and one video portray “a child who is coming into the maturity of looking for themselves,” says Case. Nowhere is this more apparent than the projection on the wall in the back of the hall, where the Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts and Alice characters all wander through the same set of woods, always missing each other by seconds. In one photograph, the three have a tea party ó and none of them will look right at each other. One of the most interesting things to me in the exhibit was the gazes of the characters ñ they look out through the photographs and meet the viewer’s eyes, challenging us to use them tell our own stories.
And that’s what Case wants us to do. “I’m interested in what you see,” she said, gesturing to the wall of photos, which contain both familiar scenes from Alice in Wonderland ñ the pool of tears, the painted roses, the plate of tarts ñ and ones of her own creation. “Make up your own ideas about the characters.”
On one side, serious political and environmental issues; on the other, a philosophical and playful look at imaginary friends. But both Harbottle and Case are driven by the need to tell a story ñ and man, but they do it with style. The exhibit runs through the end of the week, and today from 9-11 all Studio Art majors will be present in the Sussel Gallery to discuss their projects as part of the Senior Research Symposium.