In her final semester at Grinnell, Liv Hage `25.5 has refashioned the Edith Renfrow Smith `37 Gallery into a microcosm of her relationships during her time in college.
“The overarching theme is relationships and how I feel very cynical about a lot of them,” she said at the opening of her art show “LOVESICK” on Sept. 23. “But at the end of the day, I choose to care about people because it makes it worthwhile being here.”
Hage’s four pieces represent what she calls the jumble of feelings that she has experienced over her years at college.
“It’s terrifying to have things that you care about, but if you don’t and you just go through life without holding yourself to anything, are you really living?” she said. “For me, it’s a no.”
Near the entrance of the gallery, what Hage dubs as the thesis to her show is a drawing of a character of hers, called Wubby, proclaiming, “Well, cowboy, it puts my boots in a fright to care about you, but if I don’t, am I really living? Yee haw!”
To the right of her show’s thesis is her first piece, colorful stuffed fabric letters spelling out “I KNOW HE’S LAUGH-ING AT ME.” The piece came from Hage’s goal of learning to sew over the summer.
“I figured that the best way was to make a bunch of letters,” Hage said.
On the opposite wall across from the letters hangs a connected project — sewn pink lips, stuffed with polyester fiberfill, and teeth bared in a smile. “I thought of the idea that these two pieces were connected in the sense that laughing is sort of a smile,” Hage said. “And so I wanted to convey that in a peculiar way.”
The sewn mouth is a little imperfect, with hanging pink strings and slightly lopsided lips. Hage said these imperfections are elements she intentionally includes in some of her art.
“I feel like in crafting spaces especially there’s a lot of pressure to be polished and such, and I think that sort of devalues all the work that goes into it,” Hage said. “I love seeing how things are built and pieced together, especially with sewing and with fiber arts. And so I always try to leave some seams and some little tails hanging out that I think just make it more interesting and kind of force you to look at it longer.”
The third piece is a quilt that she sewed two years ago from cut-up squares of her father’s old sweaters. Pinned on the top of the quilt is a bandage embroidered with the word “Puss.”
“This piece is specifically about self-objectification and how that sometimes is the only way I can relate to men in particular,” she said. “It’s really messed up, but it’s sort of confronting that.”
The last piece in her show is a string of ceramic tiles, each with a blue or orange letter written on it to spell out the phrase Hage is always saying to her family and friends — “Love u forever.”
“I wanted to incorporate that as a nice way to end it,” she said.
“LOVESICK” will be open until Oct. 4 on the first floor of the Joe Rosenfield `25 Center.
