Currently, I am finalizing about 20 new additions to my Pharmacopoeia series.
Mark Allen Soderstrom
CREATIVE PROJECTS
This minor group of expressions came from some podcasts and books on end-of-life situations. It is said that there are a few common things that people express at this stage of life. The struck me as simple, heartfelt, and maybe especially pertinent to the pandemic times, especially in and around the institution where I work. The students I am surrounded by at work and in my community are often dislocated from friends and family they have known their whole lives and may not know who or how to turn to others for solace. It's a simple and naive way of trying to reach someone with a message of care if it is needed and can be received. These are just basic Post-It notes with the same phrases written in sharpie that I distribute in various public posting spaces.
Somewhat similarly to the Post-Its that are really just a work of random messages to be encountered in daily life, I began noticing the ubiquitous fliering in my college town start to change with the pandemic. Without new events to be publicized, these public posting spaces began to devolve into skeletons of their former lives. Walking about and photographing the changing environment of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I started getting my eyes caught on these snippets of faces staring out to me from the past. For the next several months I started documenting these hauntings of the old normal. This became mostly an Instagram-based project.
Several other minor works seem to be possibly coalescing into a group I am tentatively calling Appendages. In some of my past work (especially the Tertiary Measurements/Parallax series), I have wondered if I am being too didactic. I just love the scenarios of wonder that those works, in particular, are derived from and want to share their stories in accompanying writing. Art lovers always have an individual choice whether or not to read paired texts, so it is not inherent in the works themselves that I feel this, but in how I have exhibited these works that lead me to this query.
Boquet, 2019
Fabric, Leather, Metal, Wood.
39" x 24" x 10"
Unmanned, 2019
Materials not entirely known.
12" x 20" x 16"
Container for Divided Souls (1/3), 2016-19
Aluminum, coconut, steel
Requiem (1/3), 2016-present
Cat whiskers, Dove Beauty Bar
Untitled (1/3), 2016-present
Steel wire, stone, trees
The Pearling, 2007-18
Glue, polyeurethane, reclaimed Christmas trees
118" x 57" x 57"
One group of new works is derived from ideas of inherent human attraction presented in The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating by David M. Buss.
The works are crafted out of vintage pornographic magazine images reformed using numerous origami butterfly patterns. The end intention is to display final groups in the manner of historical butterfly glass cloches.
Contemporary art artist UNC Chapel Hill Durham Raleigh North Carolina RTP Conceptual Sculpture Drawing Painting Skeptic Mythology Comparative beliefs religion cinematography movies timelines Golden Belt Ackland Art Museum Nasher Duke North Carolina State NCCCA Wetherspoon Black Mountain Ashland Greensboro Winston Salem Eureka Humboldt Arcata Oakland California Mills College Humboldt State University College of the Redwoods Casablanca 1943 Carrack Modern NCARTS ARTS NC Haines CAM Raleigh SCCA NCMA Nashersculpturecenter NC Art Museum Artcyclopedia Art-collecting UNCG Greensboro SECCA NCCSC Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Catherine Clark Gallery Joe Philadelphia Museum of Jurassic Technology Lien Truong Modesto Junior College Osher Lifelong Learning Institute SFMOMA Cabinet Magazine Rob Cragie 21C Hotel and Museum Thomas Doyle TJ Doyle Jordine Voight SEAN FLETCHER & ISABEL REICHERT ROB CRAIGIE CABINET MAGAZINE GAIL WIGHT HEATHER GORDON INFORMATION IS BEAUTIFUL LAURA SPLAN LEE WALTON 99% INVISIBLE AGNES DENES JANET CARDIFF & GEORGE BURES MILLER SKEPTIC'S DICTIONARY ILYA & EMILIA KABAKOV JORDINE VOIGT
