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Celebrating nature’s structural underpinnings, Lew Minter, media lab director at the Williams Visual Arts Building, will exhibit his “Creation Stories Series 2005-2006” in the Williams Visual Arts Building Jan. 18-Feb. 10.
There will be a public reception with Minter 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 1 in the WilliamsVisualArtsBuilding.
The wall sculptures in the show were constructed over the last two years out of wood, cotton twine, rice paper, and polymer emulsion. The works are grids, which serve as metaphors for nature, and demonstrate a respect for how natural elements form constructs.
“The work deals with irregular structure and how that organization of elements forms a cohesive whole, which is a metaphor for such structures in nature like the bark of a tree, or crystal in a rock, or veins of a leaf,” explains Minter. “These pieces pay homage to how early cultures used nature for all of their technology, showing a respect for nature that we, today, have largely lost.”
Through the process of constructing his wall sculptures, Minter ended with pieces that not only resembled nature visually, but also felt like elements of the natural world.
“Each piece is visually constructed as a spontaneous asymmetrical grid out of which a number of shapes, or figures, are defined with the rice paper that is soaked in polymer emulsion, which allows the paper to form closely to the irregularities of the branches looking more like it grew on the wood rather than being adhered to it,” he says. “When dry, this paper looks and feels like animal skin.”
Minter hopes visitors leave the show with an increased appreciation of the natural world and a deeper respect for how aboriginal cultures lived harmoniously with their environment.
“These pieces are very meditative for me in the process of making them, and I would hope that viewers will find them meditative as well and leave them looking at both nature and our ancestors with a refreshed vision and with more respect,” he says.
The exhibit also gave art major Emily Gillespie ’07 (Hammonton, N.J.), who has worked with Minter as an EXCEL Scholar, the opportunity to learn about advertising and mounting a show. She designed the exhibition poster distributed to the campus community and in downtown Easton, and will assist in hanging the sculptures for display.
An award-winning designer, Minter was an artist-in-residence at the Taipei Culture Foundation, also known as TaipeiArtistVillage, last March. He exhibited nature-based digital images printed on watercolor paper, mounted on wood, and painted into with acrylics there and at the NationalChengchiUniversity in Taipei.
Minter also worked with Gillespieand art and English graduate Kelly Murray ’06 through an EXCEL project to digitally reconstruct damaged, centuries-old paintings for the sixth edition of The History of Italian Renaissance Art (Prentice-Hall) by renowned art historian David Wilkins. The digital reconstruction has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Minter’s work is included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Rome and dozens of private and corporate collections. He received his B.F.A. from Maryland Institute’s College of Art.