Gather & Shift

ArtSpace Gallery, Loveland, CO

Opening Reception Friday, November 10th, 6-9pm

Gather & Shift features artists Wendy Copp and Sheron Buchele Rowland, exhibiting detailed work made from naturally grown or found and collected materials. These artists create textile-like sculpture with a nod to the history of craft, and with deep and immediate ties to their natural surroundings. As they gather materials and shift their meaning through making, they are examining life, growth, and the inherent impermanence in the seasons of being.

Curated by Amy Joy Hosterman.

Sheron Buchele Rowland:

My art has its foundation in my profound love of the earth and the living things that grow upon her.  I love inter-tangling techniques and processes to make a new whole.  Fiber arts and metalsmithing, these are the components of the work I create, woven in different ways to create work that while different have common points of origin.

Homunculi are whimsical figurative sculptures - build with an Altoid tin and an idea. Born of my journey through the trauma accumulated on my pass around the sun on this rock, they are deeply symbolic and created as I work through the universal nature of the damage that life inflicts on each of our light souls.  As you open the tin, the story continues inside. 

In another spin, I take multistrand copper cable – the kind that was used to hold the memory information for the first computers – and knit metal fabric on handcrafted needles.  The patina created by heat on the tangles is beautiful and wild.

Wendy Copp:

At the center of my artistic explorations are questions about Time and the ephemeral nature of existence, usually rendered with humor and a touch of the theatrical.

Dwelling in the northeast, it is impossible to be unaffected by the cycle of the seasons. The arc of life happens before our eyes, as vegetation hurtles out of the ground, puts forth flowers and seeds, changes colors, and falls away again. My current work is created using natural materials- leaves, bark, grasses- at various stages in their development. Viewed as a medium for the making of art, these materials are perfect metaphors for Time, as well as containers for endless layers of meaning. They are right outside my door, and collecting them in my locale connects me to my spot on earth. When these materials are fashioned into clothing they stand in for the human relationship to temporal processes, as well as representing the unseen wearer.

The act of gathering is central to my process. I collect when it is possible to arrest a particular phase of growth or decay; when the linden leaves have just dropped and are still yellow and supple, or in the spring when the maple leaves have whitened and turned to lace. There is a rhythm to this practice, forcing me to remain alert to the minute shifts occurring in my local forest. If I do not respond swiftly enough, my opportunity to use a material is lost until the following year.