Crystal Bridges’ Electric Art Forum allows guests to visit with artists

On Saturday (Jan. 17), guests at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art had the rare opportunity to chat with 10 artists from all over the country about their art. The artists have had their work on display for the last four months as part of the “State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now” exhibit at the museum.

Saturday’s event was dubbed the “Electric Art Forum” and included personal visits with artists, and three panel discussions on “thinking critically about technology’s impact on how we experience art; and how the artist uses technology to transform our perspectives of time and space, virtually and in the real world.”

“The Electric Art Forum came about through the unique opportunity to bring together artists that are interested in experimenting with some of these electronic mediums like projection, light and video and using that as a way to exhibit artistic expression,” said Beth Bobbit, media relations manager for Crystal Bridges.

Their work ranged from a multi-dimensional experience with mirrors, to video installations, to still pictures taken from actual “tweets” posted on Twitter, to a high definition video of a pilgrimage to a sacred Tibetan mountain, to a Mickey Mouse sculpture made out from cast-off television backs.

In the north gallery of the museum, Adam Belt, from San Diego, Calif., chatted with guests next to his exhibit, “Through the Looking Glass.” His work mimics the shape of the primary mirror in the James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched in 2018.  Belt told visitors that the mirrors in the piece heighten the sense of wonder and reflection that guests feel as they gaze it. He said the piece is “about how we will be looking into the cosmos and connecting with it.” 

In a darkened room at the other end of the exhibit, Dave Greber from New Orleans showcased two of his video works: “Sinew-en-ciel” a multi-colored, many shaped video, which was projected on the wall; and “Stilllives II:Vignette” which was projected on the floor.

Greber started his career in commercial video and he said his art takes those skills and creates images designed to “inoculate” the viewer from manipulative media that surrounds us. Most of what he does is built on editing as a creative process, he said.

“It’s like taking away and rearranging things, but it can be a creative force itself. My stuff is just layers and layers of video, superimposed on top of each other,” Greber said.

A crowd gathered around Susie Lee at her exhibits entitled, “Jake,” “Johnny,” “Young Trucker,” which were “time-based high definition portraits” of three oil field workers. Lee filmed the men from North Dakota with no sound as they sat silently for her camera and the resulting videos were played for guests. Lee told guests she enjoyed the unpredictability of the process.

“You just never know what it’s going to be because we never edit anything,” she said.  “It’s all real time. We start the camera and just keep going.”

Lee said she enjoyed guest’s reactions as they viewed the exhibit and was fascinated by how closely they watched the men in the video.

“They’ll say things like, ‘He seems really sad,’ or ‘This guy seems nervous’,” Lee said. “People are good at reading those visual cues and understanding who they are.”

Lee said the purpose of her exhibit was to give a different dynamic to the discussion about the practice of “fracking” as a means of producing oil in our country.  She said she wanted to make things more complex with that story, rather than saying, “fracking is good or bad.”

Seven other “State of the Art artists were present to visit with the crowd on Saturday:  Carl Joe Williams from New Orleans; Danial Nord from San Pedro, Calif.; Jawshing Arthur Liou from Bloomington, Ind.; Nate Larson from Baltimore, Md.; Marni Shindelman from Athens, Ga.; Craig Colorusso from Fayetteville, Ark.; and Donna Smith from Fayetteville, Ark.

The State of the Art exhibit will close on Monday afternoon (Jan. 19).