Art and Science meld at 950
Gallery
by Alec Clayton
Published in the Weekly Volcano, Jan. 31, 2019
untitled wall hanging construction by Mary Coss, photo by Alec Clayton |
Hanging by the entrance to 950 Gallery is a work of art by Mary Coss
that appears to be a jumble of words shaped from bent wire and suspended inside
what looks like an old window frame. The words, mostly jumbled and unreadable,
hang an inch or so in front of a flat white surface upon with the shadows of
the letters are cast. The frame and the letters are encrusted with salt
crystals looking somewhat like ice and water and somewhat like barnacles
encrusted on a sunken ship.
The poem is unreadable. A few random words or phrases can be deciphered
with intense concentration. One can make out the words “coagulate” and phrases
such as “runs through clinched (unreadable).” It is mysterious, and the overall
feeling is of sadness, loss and timelessness.
On the wall next to it is a printed poem by the
artist, Mary Coss. It reads in part:
“Nightfall denies enfolding virgin waters,
tampered statistics drip
Melting rock turns to tears
Shadow sways life force to commodity
Coagulated around greed …”
The show is Silent Salinity: after
the dig. It consists of constructed poetry like
the above and common objects such as an old manual typewriter, a rotary phone,
a broken suitcase and many another such object, all from an earlier time,
probably prior to the 1960s. Everything is encrusted with crystalized salt. The
objects purport to be recovered from an archeological dig or perhaps a ship
wreck. These are artifacts from lives lost or at least from a way of life that
is no longer.
Coss,
a Seattle artist who has lived and traveled all over the world, uses sculpture, sound, projection and light to “weave
social justice with visual arts,” according a statement on her website. She
describes this installation as art and science melded in salt-encrusted
artifacts. It is a dystopian landscape. “I use the language of metaphor to
examine contemporary issues,” she writes. “Silent
Salinity explores the relationship between water, global warming and
culture. Through a two-year partnership with spatial ecologist Roger Fuller, I
examined the dangerously increased salinity levels encroaching on local
estuaries, and on consequently our freshwater re-sources.”
The
word “silent” in the show title is apropos, as it evokes the silence one might encounter
when exploring the undersea world. There is the feeling one should tip-toe
through the gallery. You can almost hear air bubbles rising to the surface as
you look at the artifacts of a not-too-distant past and wonder who wrote on
this typewriter, did they write love letters to someone across the sea, or
poetry or a novel that may have never been published; what did they carry in
that battered old suitcase and from where to where to where?
And
there are bones, three large bones, possibly a femur or a humerus, each on a
small shelf.
Silent Salinity, 1-5 p.m. Thursdays (until 9 p.m. Third Thursday), or by appointment,
through Feb. 21, 950 Gallery, 950
Pacific Ave. Suite 205, Tacoma, 253.627.2175, www.spaceworkstacoma.com/gallery.
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