“If you could use three words to describe Approaching the Unsystematic, what would they be?” Junior and Art major Marisabel Rey ’19 furrows her brow, contemplating the question. She then smiles, and responds with “Unpredictable, time consuming and fascinating.” Approaching the Unsystematic is an art exhibit currently on display in the Kennedy Arts Center that combines form, color and texture through the use of ceramics and inspiration of nature.
Rey, a recipient of the 2017 Emerson Grant, used her resources to explore a new artistic concept: color. “Personally, I’m really bad with colors,” she admits, adding, “so I try to look for references outside of my head,” which is why she looks to nature for inspiration. When she’s out hiking or just walking around, Rey tries to see how colors interact with each other in natural settings, stepping outside of her comfort zone in order to better understand the effect color can have on an art piece. The product: Approaching the Unsystematic.
The junior took the entirety of her three-month summer break to perfect the ceramic pieces currently on display. She excitedly recounts the almost three-week period of time it took to make each piece, describing the process of shaping the clay, letting it dry for two weeks, firing it, glazing it, and then firing it again until the desired result was accomplished. The exhibit is made even more fascinating knowing that three weeks of time and effort that have been put into each work. Rey’s favorite piece is actually the first one she created, simply because of the amount of times she re-fired it in order to get it perfect. She can attribute a lot of her confidence working –and a lot of times re-working — with ceramics and color to Associate Professor Rebecca Murtaugh. While they were both working on separate projects, Rey explains how their work was constantly influenced by one another.
“It was kind of that that we were both doing our own thing in the studio,” she says, “but we had each other, so if I was building, or had a really awesome result I would go to her.” But Professor Murtaugh did not simply pass on advice about art, but organization as well, “She’s also super organized,” Rey states, “I’ll get a result and won’t write it down so I’ll just use [the piece] and never be able to replicate it. She was a constant reminder telling me ‘what if you want to use it again,’” helping her develop technical and practical as well as conceptual skills.
When asked about how Hamilton has helped her develop as an artist, Rey replied by saying, “I’ve begun to realize how proficient I have become in everything that I’ve been doing, and am impressed by how well I am able to handle technical stuff.”
In terms of actual conceptual work, she says that she finds it much easier now to see how form, color and texture interact in the pieces she creates in order to more effectively convey meaning, and how important it is to understand the role each concept can play. And, of course, after viewing the gallery for myself, the ultimate question was its message. What did she want viewers to take away from the exhibit? “That art doesn’t have to be that intellectual or pretentious,” Rey says with a smile, “my work is pretty straightforward, so I’d say that things don’t have to be that complicated in order to be cool or interesting to look at.”
Approaching the Unsystematic will be on display in the Linda Johnson Gallery on the first floor of the Kennedy Arts Center through mid-September.
