Graduate students’ works explore time
Published on Fri., August 22nd, 2008
An art exhibition exploring the representation of time throughout history and within cultures will open at the Spencer Museum of Art on Aug. 23.
The exhibition, Time/Frame, was organized by graduate student interns at the museum.
Richard Klocke, exhibition designer at the Spencer Museum of Art, prepares for the Time/Frame exhibit Tuesday alongside some of the artwork.
Photo by Jessica Sain-Baird
Kris Ercums, curator of Asian art at the Spencer Museum of Art, works Tuesday at the museum in preparation for the Time/Frame exhibit. The exhibit is expected to open this week and coincides with the museum's showing of the movie "Back to the Future" on Thursday night.
Photo by Jessica Sain-Baird
Kate Meyer, curatorial assistant at the museum, said the exhibition was divided into four sub-themes: Short Time, Long Time, Lifetime and Beyond Time.
“We all worked together to make it seem like it was coming from one uniform voice,” Meyer said.
Meyer said visitors would enter the exhibition through an area that featured a series of clocks. One of the clocks is a Hawaiian necklace that measures time as it burns. The necklace is made of nuts that each take 15 minutes to burn.
The Short Time category of the exhibition addresses increments of time and includes pieces such as a stop-motion photograph of a squash game.
The Long Time category focuses on different representations of cyclical events such as seasons. It features both a series of 17th century Dutch paintings and a series of Japanese paintings from 1895. Meyer said it was exciting to see how different cultures depicted the seasons.
Meyer said the Lifetime category focused on measuring time through personally significant events. One series of works is arranged to represent a lifetime, beginning with eggs and finishing with skeletons.
The fourth sub-theme, Beyond Time, features abstract concepts such as meditation, death and time travel.
Ellen Raimond, Naperville, Ill., graduate student, worked on the exhibition and said the lifetime series showed how much fun the interns had putting it together.
“It’s playful but at the same time there is a seriousness to it,” Raimond said.
Meyer said this was the first show where pieces from the Spooner Hall collection of over 10,000 artifacts had been included.
Recent graduate Stephanie Teasley worked with the artifacts and said they were integrated into the show to demonstrate the continuity of time.
Graduate student interns Robert Fucci, Shuyun Ho, Lauren Kernes, Lara Kuykendall, Raimond and Teasley began work on the Time/Frame exhibition last August.
Meyer acted as project manager and said this was the first time interns at the museum had come together to work on a collective project.
“It was exciting to see all our different interpretations of time,” Raimond said.
Meyer said the idea for Time/Frame began with a planned exhibition and artist talk by Wendell Castle, artist and University graduate. The exhibition will consist of five clock sculptures created by Wendell.
The Time/Frame exhibition will run through Dec. 14 and the Castle exhibition will open Sept. 20.
— Edited by Arthur Hur
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