Natural, wearable art sculptures unveiled at fieldwork

Aug 09, 2012

Photo: artist Alicia Marvan “wears” one of her works at her opening show at the fieldwork site located near Maberly

Art has a tendency to come alive when viewers are invited to become an integral part of it. That was the case for visitors to fieldwork 's latest sculptural installation by international and interdisciplinary artist Alicia Marvan. Marvan who hails from Michoacan, Mexico, is just finishing up her residency at fieldwork, the outdoor art gallery located just past 2501 Old Brooke Road near Maberly. Her time there culminated in a show that opened at the fieldwork site on July 27.

The installation includes five individual sculptures, all made from natural materials that Marvan found and built with on site, and which speak about the human body and fashion in space, ideas that she has been exploring since her work took a turn from performance art to more concrete, aesthetic creations. “My aim with this work was to continue my work with the body in space and fashion by creating sculptures where the viewers themselves can become the performers,” Alicia said at the opening.

All five pieces, which are untitled, were inspired by the materials she found when she first arrived at the site three weeks earlier. “I was immediately inspired by the local wood I found here, especially the red and white pine but also pieces of discarded wood.” In all five pieces she has incorporated different varieties of found wood into wearable art pieces, each of which, due to her added constructions of either interior stairs or ladders, enable the viewer to physically get inside the pieces and “try them on”.

One piece, which calls to mind a tall male figure, was made from discarded outer slabs of white pine. It includes leg slats that allow the forest to be seen through the lower sections. An opening at the back with a few stairs up invites the viewer inside to become its wearer. A second piece made from similar sections of red pine was constructed to form a large dress and it has been adorned with unglazed ceramic flowers, which give it a more formal but still natural look. A similar interior constructed of stairs invites the viewer inside to try it on.

A third piece and one of my favorites is made from inverted branches of sumac arranged in a whirling construction, which makes the structure appear like a whirling full skirt that stands up from the ground on the branches' pointed ends. In this piece a ladder made from cut pieces of larger branches invites the viewer to climb the skirt to wear it from above or alternately to climb inside its lower open spaces and adorn it from below.

One of the most successful pieces in my opinion was one made in two sections, the upper part, a ceramic torso adjoined to two gray and weathered pine slabs that look like long, stick-like legs. The piece calls to the viewer to insert their head and arms into the work from behind, the same way you would dress a doll with paper cut-out clothes.

For Marvan, who has been working as a professional artist for the last 12 years and who studied performance art at New York's State University, this work represents a definite new direction and one she will no doubt continue to explore in two more upcoming residencies that she will undertake while in Ontario. The next will be at Artscape on the Toronto Islands and the third at the Tree Museum located in the Muskokas. For more information visit www.fieldworkproject.com