Our staff selected works related to The Bascom's annual theme, place, using an inductive approach to ask what pieces in our collection might tell us, as viewers, about the role of place in works of art. This collective exercise gave us insights to the works that reside here in our building. In seeing the collection anew, we noticed several characteristics about the relation between place and art:
Structure: Place is represented through use of lines and shapes that create pattern, whether this be in representations of buildings, rhythms of the land, or in abstract forms that seem to provide a sense of ground ing or location.
Transitions: Doorways, thresholds, windows, and passageways help the viewer situate a scene but also invite us to see boundaries -- the separation of intimate and public, the interior and the outdoors, nature and civilization, the self and the other. The places in-between are locations where we define our lives, navigate the ev eryday, and experience moments of subtle transformation as we make routine arrivals and departures from one space to another.
The Organic: Especially in a collection like ours, which was chosen in the context of our location on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau, nature, plant-life, geography and biodiversity shape our experience of where we are and what we notice in our everyday world, from the macroscopic views of plant life to the panoramic views of landscape, the back-and-forth of closeness and distance shape our experience of this place.
We invite you, the audience to draw your own conclusions about the role of place in this selection of works.
A free, public reception will be held Friday, February 25th at 5pm at The Bascom to celebrate our three current winter exhibitions.
