Wabash Valley College is pleased to announce a new exhibit now on display in the Brubeck Arts Center Gallery, through May 6.
The exhibit, “All You Can Eat,” features the artwork of ceramic artist Emily Loehle, artist and art educator originally from Louisville, Kentucky. She received a Bachelor of Fine Art in Ceramics degree from Western Kentucky University and a Master of Fine Art in Ceramics degree from Indiana University. Through solo, group, and juried exhibitions, her work has been shown on both national and international levels in cities from Philadelphia and Seattle to Houston and Jingdezhen, China. And she enriches her work too through participation in workshops and residencies at art centers across the country, including Watershed Center for Ceramic Art and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. She currently lives and works in Vincennes, Indiana where she teaches for the Art and Design Department at Vincennes University.
In her Artist Statement, Loehle comments: “Food is one of the most basic human needs. What we eat is an integral definition of who we are. Yet, in this modern climate of convenience we are playing an ever-decreasing role in the creation of the vital resources that nourish us and an ever-increasing one in the consumption of them. Whether deciding between boxes of cereal, cuts of meat, or kinds of apples, it seems we are engaging ourselves in the same way, and I wonder if life might not be more fulfilling were these experiences more authentic and our participation in them more tangible.”
She goes on to say, “In my work with food imagery, I portray food and food products, which are reflective of my own experiences as a consumer and which I feel are particularly representative of current attitudes toward production and consumption as a whole. Through casting these foods and creating replicas of them, I am recalling the monotonous process that is responsible for their existence in the first place. Through then manipulating these generic forms, composing, recombining and misrepresenting them, I am playing with perceptions of what is familiar to portray something that is not. A pile of groceries floats in mid-air without the table to support it; a plate of bread succumbs to the weight of loaves and leans off the wall held only by a ribbon. Using these misconstrued relationships, I aim to elicit a recognition of shared experience, walking a line between sentiment and uncertainty, and I hope that as I reflect on the significance that these products of modern society have in my own sense of identity, the viewer might be called to do the same.”
The public is invited to “Meet the Artist” from 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 7 in the Brubeck Art Gallery, prior to “The Cashore Marionettes,” which will be presented in the Brubeck Theatre at 7 o’clock.
