Students passing by the Edith Renfrow Smith `37 Gallery might think it is closed when they view blackout curtains lining the walls, but one peek behind the first screen reveals a shaded grove of looming branches and a shamrock-colored forest floor. The exposed spotlights illuminate hundreds of handcrafted ceramic leaves — the focal point of Karis McCaskill `24’s new installation, “keep. wander. collect.”
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McCaskill’s is the third student showcase to appear in Smith Gallery this semester. Inspiration for the artwork struck her when staring at the grass. “When you’re pre-growing the grass and the grass is all sprouting leaves before they mow it down, I really liked how that looked.”
When mowers did shave the campus green spaces, McCaskill said her project became “like a silent protest to keep the leaves.”
Lining the forest floor of the gallery, McCaskill constructed rows of small, curved leaves. Primarily a sculpture artist, McCaskill molded the leaves with clay, layered one side of each with glaze and covered them in bright green flocking, a material similar to felt. She then attached the ceramic leaves to sticks she found around Grinnell and mounted them to a piece of black plywood.
Talia Foley `24, McCaskill’s partner, said, “It’s been all semester, every time she’s seen a stick she just starts dragging it with her.”
McCaskill, a studio art major, said she created the first iteration of the project in an art seminar class. This original collection of leaves only spanned a one-foot by one-foot board that McCaskill displayed outdoors. The current display extends over two sides of the gallery floor.
“I didn’t realize how much I would need to make sure it was a full project. I went through a couple weeks of dreading this project, but once they [the leaves] came out of the kiln, I got really excited. It was a whole arc,” she said.
When rethinking the work for a gallery space, McCaskill said, “I didn’t like the look of the white walls.” As a stark contrast from natural light, she enlisted seven friends to suspend several black curtains to envelope the space. The result is a combination of natural and artificial materials that McCaskill’s friends described as eerie.
Braden Meiners `24, who helped McCaskill set up, said, “It’s really neat because I’ve never seen it [the gallery] like this before.”
Though originally intimidated by showcasing her work, McCaskill said presenting in the Smith Gallery “is a very straightforward process that you shouldn’t be scared of. I think it’s a lot of work, and I didn’t realize how many people I would need to pull this off … but everyone’s been very encouraging.”
McCaskill’s work will be on display until April 20. If you see her there, she might let you touch the fuzzy ceramic leaves.
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