poorworm

To what extent must we make? What compels us to explore a space?

Extent- Extension – Ex–Tension

There is something about filling a space.  Beili Liu, on the faculty for studio art at University of Texas, Austin, uses spaces to create site-specific installations. Upon entering Liu’s work I am filled up, but not with objects. I am filled by light, air, color, and sound that is not there, but I still hear it; a gentle vibration that occasionally waxes and wanes depending on the moray affect of the golden threads that cross the path of my eye as I descend and ascend the stairwell of Form/Space Atelier in Belltown.

Liu’s installation challenges the viewer on many levels and begs you to just be in the space and do nothing. I can’t help but wonder at the time, commitment, and passion for how she alters the space in the tender way she does. She has created a mesmerizing work that echoes the main feature of the gallery: its stairwell. Entering quietly, I felt as though I could hear the harmony of the thread, a gentle plucking harp like sound, I yearned to touch the thread and held back.

Yet there is an angularity with the sutures that hold the thread on each side of the stairwell. Stapled every ¼” or so apart, it’s as if the wall has been surgically manipulated with the tracing line of the echoed stairwell. It strikes me with a severity that is softened by the resonance in between the two sets of marks on the walls. Hovering 7 feet and 2 inches above as you descend or ascend, it’s like a gilded mirror peering into another world.

I had the honor of dining with Beili Liu and her partner Blue Way before their return to Texas. She discussed how she is “interested in working with line and tension that is the memory of line. Sometimes the work starts with the material and other times I respond to the space, in this case I was able to work with both.”

Liu works mostly with one material at a time and lets intuition guide her process. This is her 2^nd piece using the golden mercerized thread and she’s created several pieces using red thread over the last three years. She shared, “I want my work to be worthy of people’s time and attention.” Taking two full days to install with Blue, he said, “She responds to process, the dominant element is the stairs in the gallery, she puts the art above the stairs, and that helps us be mindful of going up and down. If people don’t take the time, and just come in and go out, they might miss it.”

She’s excited about the process perhaps more than knowing why she made it. In a time when intention is pushed on the viewer, she is maybe asking us to just try to have an experience and then make-up our mind. Liu has created a world with new gravity, upside-down we glide on her steps, floating, clinging, suspended on our way, transcending the extension, reverberating within stillness.

Extent runs through March 13th, 2011 at Form/Space Atelier. To see more of Beili Liu’s work go to her website. BeiliLiu.com

 

 

 

 

Less than three. <3. Heart. Love. Iconic. Cliche? Not when it comes to Shawn Zeiger’s show at The Firm in Georgetown in South Seattle. Shawn has taken the heart and shown us a multitude of ways to feel. Drugged, velvety, crushed, broken, wrapped, confined, protective, lost, found, tempted and adored. I saw the work yesterday, a week after the opening. Running into Steve Withycombe at All City Coffee gave me a chance to visit the show. Iconic, solid, fluid, stunning, the hearts told all sorts of stories. All but one are titled with a date from what each experience means for Shawn. I wondered about the experiences, but enjoyed relating to them without knowing. I took a few photographs and soon left for an integrated massage, as I have been having lower back problems for the last six weeks. During my treatment, the subject of the metaphorical heart came up, about letting go, holding on, what’s important, what’s necessary, other grand notions of being human and a variety of losses and gains life has in store. I shared the photographs with my practitioner, she too was in awe. Today, I received a text from my Dad that my Grandfather was in the hospital. Thinking of him, he’s 91, I get nervous, those dreadful thoughts, I haven’t visited enough, I forgot to Skype him this week, what if…? Immediately I called Dad and asked to talk to Grandpa. He said it might be heart failure, but they won’t know until tomorrow. So now I wait. Heart failure seems so out of our control, it is, and when one has lived for over 90 years is there an acquiescing in the end? I don’t think so. I want to believe it’s not the end, my heart isn’t ready for this sort of failure. This type seems different than lost or broken love, different in that I wonder as humans if we make choices in our relationships, for when they start and end. But maybe we don’t, perhaps I could learn something from Shawn’s hearts, the love for my Grandfather, and from his real heart. Such a mystery how it pumps blood to live, such a mystery how it falls, flails, and fearlessly engages in the act of loving and letting go.

Come and see the work by appointment through The Firm or Z-one-05. Steve Withycombe, Trey Jones and Chris McMullen co-own The Firm with Michele McMullen as curator. It runs through March with a second opening during the next Art Attack in Georgetown, March 12^th, 2011.