Spotted | January 2021: Electric Fire and Microbes

Kirsten Willders is a 2020 MFA graduate from Alfred University. Her work takes one by surprise because it so mature and focused for a student. Theater dominates in the 2019 series, As Above, So Below, with red neon, glass, ceramic, GTO wire, electrode boots, latex paint and transformers.  As she explains, here work sets out to escape fingers and enter the sublime:

My work is concerned with structures, the sacred, the senses, and the sublime. I utilize architectural foundation as an entry point to invisible structures, including social constructs, personal identity, notions of façade, and material hierarchy. The traditional function of the Classical structures in my work is often subverted or manipulated through design, material choice, and/or installation.

I seek to imbue my work with an agency that extends far beyond my own fingertips. Sensory information such as scent and light push the work further forward where I can no longer reach. Like a physical proprioceptive experience within a soaring architectural space, light and scent are encompassing and unavoidable.

Is It a Plate?

Is it a plate, glass or ceramic, enamel, slip or microbes?

Scientists from around the world submitted art grown in petri dishes for the American Society of Microbiology’s annual contest, which has announced the winners in The Guardian. Restricted access to labs broadened the remit, with traditional art on the beauty of microbes accepted for the first time

First place in the traditional general category was awarded to The Gardener by Joanne Dungo, from Northridge Hospital Medical Center in Northridge, California. The winner in the traditional kids category was I Love My Microbiome by Ariana Gestal-Gurr from Shreveport, Louisiana, drawn after putting her fingers up her nose

Adriana Celis Ramirez and Valeri Sáenz Moncaleano from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, took second place in the open general for Lactophenol-Cotton Blue Clay Stain, a clay representing the interconnection between clay and human mycosis