[Vision2020] Prichard Art Gallery: Allie Feezell's Exhibition "...creation driven by metaphysical speculations and active meditation"

[Ted Moffett]

I talked with Allie Feezell by chance a few times in recent months,
before her now showing Prichard gallery intallation opened.  I
mentioned the beautiful multi-colored sand mandalas Buddhist monks
create, only to be wiped out by the monks within days (
http://www.essortment.com/tibetan-sand-paintings-60711.html ), as a
statement on avoiding attachment, among other things.

In our conversation, I indicated I did not think I'd make it as a
Buddhist monk... I'm attached to the things of beauty (if they are
indeed this) I create, along with a lot of other things.  And besides,
I'm glad William Blake did not wipe out his poetry/art creations, as a
statement on non-attachment... What a loss for humanity this would
have been!

I discovered last week at the Prichard gallery that the example of the
Buddhist monks transient sand art was perhaps more to the point of
Feezell's installation than I originally would have guessed...

I was lucky to be able to spend as much time as I wanted to explore
this exhibition last week, totally alone in surprising quiet, given
the city outside, on the upper floor of the Prichard gallery, this
being a transformative experience.

Knowing as little as I knew about this interactive art allowed the
experience of it to be without certain preconceptions that can lessen
the wonder of full in the moment discovery.

Therefore, don't read the following interview, just go the Prichard
gallery, where the installation should remain till May 5!

http://inland360.com/prichard-exhibition-consuming-art/

Prichard exhibition: Consuming artPublished on April 18, 2012 with No Comments
Allie Feezell’s master’s thesis is due Friday, and she’s walking on egg shells.

Literally.

Works by the graduate student in art at the University of Idaho are
part of the Graduate Art Exhibit at the Prichard Art Gallery in
Moscow.

Feezell’s pieces in the exhibition, which runs through May 5, comprise
two room-sized multimedia installations. They are constructed with
broken egg shells, onion skins, strawberry tops, orange peels, burlap,
tree branches, beer six-pack rings, parts of egg cartons, 2,000 loops
made of jewelers wire as well as all the varying shadows those
materials create.

“This was my quiche year,” Feezell said in an interview at the gallery
on Tuesday. “I ate two or three eggs every day.”

The pieces, which she constructed on site at the gallery prior to last
week’s opening reception, took her more than 40 hours to complete, and
she finished just two hours before the reception was to begin.

The pieces, which deal with the ways humans think about subjects like
life, death, waste, consumption, empty space and silence, are based on
Feezell’s interest in Taoism and Zen Buddhism.

The end result is an “interactive piece that interacts with movement,”
she said. “It’s a world you’re involved with, not just a pretty
picture on the wall.

“To have a static exhibit is not interesting to me. (The viewer) is in
the midst of change.”

She said a driving force in her pieces was the idea of silent
meditation — but not only for the viewer experiencing the final
pieces.

“The act of making it was an act of meditation for myself,” she said.

“The underlying essence of Taoism and Zen Buddhism is to lose the
sense of an individual self, to understand absence and to have no
worldly attachments while still understanding the interconnectivity of
all,” Feezell said. “Absence and nonattachment are nearly
inconceivable in our contemporary world, thus it seems that only
through form may we come to understand emptiness.”

Her exhibit is tilted “An absurd creation driven by metaphysical
speculations and active meditation.”

Like life itself, the exhibits change and move, depending on how
humans interact with them, Feezell said. In fact, the pieces —
especially the one that includes strawberry tops and flowers made of
orange peels and artichoke leaves — are changing by the minute as the
vegetation continues to dry further.

“As an artist, I don’t want to waste resources,” she said of her
choice of materials. “This is literally the detritus of my
consumption.”

When the exhibit ends, she will deconstruct the pieces, and most of
the materials will go into her compost pile.

The exhibit is free and open to the public. The Prichard Art Gallery
hours are 10 a.m.-8 p.m, Tuesday-Saturday and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday.
The gallery is at 414 S. Main St. in downtown Moscow. More information
is available online at www.uidaho.edu/prichardartgallery.

IF YOU GO
WHAT: Prichard Art Gallery Graduate Art Exhibit.
WHEN: Through May 5
WHERE: Prichard Art Gallery, 414 S. Main St.,
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett