Exhibit Paper

Amy Sacksteader: Will Have Been

            For an additional art event I went to Amy Saacksteader’s exhibit, Will Have Been. This was an interesting exhibit and was not at all what I was expecting. When I first walked in the gallery it seemed like there was barely any artwork. I did a quick walk through and then decided to stop and look at each piece closely and take my time trying to figure out what her work was about.

            The gallery contained numerous pieces that at first I did not understand, but once I read Sacksteaders artist statement I was able to make a little more sense out of her exhibit. She stated that she is interested in records of past events, lived histories, and significant sites. The first piece seen when walking into her exhibit is a drawing of the word silver. Then as you go into the gallery there is what seems to be random objects. My favorite pieces visually were the two biggest pieces in the room because I liked the way that they took up the space in the gallery. One was named “Artifact” and is a desk with a chair that is a former workstation that she had installed in her exhibit. A lamp, paints, paper and other art supplies sit on top of the desk. It was visually appealing because at first it is not clear as to why this desk is sitting in the middle of her exhibit, but once I found out that she is interested in doing works that represent the past I could see why this workstation was in her exhibit—it was an artifact. Another piece that I liked was also a main focus in her exhibit and it was made out of what looked like artificial snow, but was actually rock salt and around the rock salt there were safety cones that had LED’s under them. I don’t really understand what the meaning behind this piece was, but I thought that it was visually appealing and I thought what she used to create the piece was interesting. I never would have thought of using rock salt, safety cones, and power cords to create a piece, but she did and for me it made me think of the way the weather has been and how it has effected people. The piece that I didn’t really like was one she named Slide and Rose which was a silver leaf on paper. I guess I didn’t like this one because I didn’t get anything out of it because I felt as though it was really generic and not as visually appealing as the other work in her exhibit.

            When I had this exhibit in mind I was expecting a lot more and was not really impressed with the work, but she did have some very appealing pieces. Her paintings and drawings named “Silver,” “Sunset and Sunrise” and “Tahoe and Pyramid” were all really good, but there were elements to the exhibit that I didn’t understand or find remotely visually appealing. However, it did look as though she knew how she wanted it all to come together and had a really good sense of what she wanted it to look like in the gallery because everything was very carefully placed and came together visually as a whole.