Ann Page Recent Sculptures & Drawings and Lecture "Blurring Boundries"

 

In her lecture before the show she started off by explaining what inspired her.  As an artist I loved this kind of thing. I love to hear the stories how pieces were made and how her past and present works evolved. Her work is very beautiful and intricate and looks like it may have been inspired by the ocean. Most of her pieces, especially her 3D printer made works kind of look a bit like coral. But that’s not the story behind them. She didn’t just set out just to make” beautiful” art.

This made me realize most of my own approach to making art is to find only beauty in things and showcasing that. After hearing Ann Pages lecture and seeking her work I am inspired to take an explorative and “let’s see what happens” leap of faith approach to art.  She not only finds the beauty in something simple and everyday things.  In the lecture she spoke about a piece inspired from as the small details in popcorn.  Page made it into an interesting pattern, a whole different creation!

Page’s small pieces dazzled me the most with their beauty.  I liked the multi cut out layered dimensions she created. When you look up close at these you see what looks like light amoeba like sketches that give the pieces more playful fun.  These appear at first to be something right out of a sketchbook, fun floaty lightly painted and very imaginative but from here lecture I learned there is more thought and depth to what she does. The multiple layers of her pieces really gave her work beautiful depth like a tiny microcosm you can look into. There is so much for the eye to see.  The foreground and background have wonderful  lattice  like cutouts that overlap and show deeper dimensions. It reminds me of something you might see while deep sea diving.

Ann Page had larger and similar pieces that showcased more prominently the cut out layered dimensions.  I really liked the multiple layers and the depth these showed.  They were less playful than the smaller ones. In a lot of ways the layers were in contrast of one another. I loved and hated this. In some pieces it seemed like they didn’t belong with another and it seemed jarring to the senses. Stepping back at the same time I could also see the meaning behind it and could enjoy the madness. She has water colored cutouts with what appeared to be photo shopped layers beneath that. There is an intense difference between the photo shopped layers and gentle watercolor cutouts.  All in all found the work interesting and indeed “Blurring Boundaries” of my own. 

Page also made tiny sculptures with a 3D printer! In her lecture she mentioned exploring this technology! How bold just to pick up a new technology and artistically see how far you could go with it! For myself I like to take a bunch of classes and explore alone for a long time with a new medium.  I feel freed as an artist by her  bold approach in this. Some of the coral like pieces were paired with small artworks with the ones mentioned above. This gave the work even more dimension and playfulness-a tiny world so intricate.

There were other interesting sculptures, ones made what appeared to be out of paper stacked on one another.  They looked something out of an old science fiction movie or like a light fixture of the 1960’s! I liked the delicacy the paper gave them.

The lecture “Blurring Boundaries” and the art show “Recent Sculptures & Drawings” opened my eyes to being more experimental in my own art. She also encouraged me to look deeper into my mundane life for ideas.  Ann Pages work is definitely an inspiration and a cue for me to go bold in my work.

Ann Page Recent Sculptures and Drawings