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Dead Flowers Live as Art
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pandra Williams made 11,000 lbs of adobe bricks and gathered native plants from hither and yon for “Tumulus,” her six-foot-tall, sheltering structure in the back corner of eyedrum.
Her piece is the cozy comfort station in “Dead Flowers,” which is otherwise devoted to thoughts of ephemerality and death. But, like the brilliant colors of autumn leaves, which signal their imminent demise, the artists put on a lively show.
Stan Woodard’s “Passage” — a bower made of kudu vines—was green and fragrant when the show opened. Now the leaves are graying and stiff. On one hand, it’s an unintended riff on the drought. On the other, it’s reassuring to discover that kudzu is not immortal.
The show closes Saturday.
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By eggtooth
November 25, 2007 11:43 AM | Link to this
URBAN TUMULUS @ EYEDRUM
Constructed from the environment immediately around us, Urban Tumulus invites us to engage and participate. It says so much in its beautiful silence. It is at once an experience, activated by the involvement of the viewer, as it is also simply wanting to be. Pandra Williams has directed the creation of something that has been created as a piece of art as well as something that is asking to not be art, but to be as close to real as possible. It takes this dynamic one step further by concealing its true nature.It’s ingredients play a strange trick on the person interacting with it. It is a piece of unique beauty, while at once is a thing of commonalities. It wants you to understand that this is every day. You should appreciate it. Its elements, individuated are common wild grasses from metro Atlanta’s sidewalks, Georgia red clay, glass, tile, bits of metal, debris. Commonly found elements in the urban experience. Even things we consider or do not consider as we ourselves discard and create it. Things we walk past all the time in the city. Urban Tumulus is very purposefully designed to enter. As a tumulus, something commonly associated with burial mounds, it suggests the fact that it is alive while manifested from inert objects. The human involvement in the making of this creation is brought to mind. The sheer weight and mass of the object existing before the viewer, having an unreal and very earthbound human experience. It is also an artistic experience, an observation that is dependant on your involvement. Just as our environment is a beuatuful thing we travel through, taking for granted as well as stoppping to find the wonder in the details. This installation invites you inside to consider how it came to be, to be with it, and to be part of it. It asks you to walk back out and hopefully carry some of this consideration with you in your daily travels.
dead flowers:the wall mural and many other things were fascinating.some of the intricate details of this show really required a sense of time to experience. this entire exhibit was beautiful.