This summer, artists Haley Andres, Abbie Baldwin and Kristan Schuford were awarded grants that allowed them to pursue their craft while living abroad in Germany for three months. A fourth student, Luc Sokolsky, spent the time in Budapest, learning the trade of art curation.
With the exception of Andres, the students gave a presentation sharing their experiences over the last six months as part of an opening reception of an exhibit in Kittredge Gallery which featured the three artists’ work, and was curated by Sokolsky.
The three artists described the experience of starting out in an unfamiliar country without teachers or community as a guide. They all agreed that the beginning was a struggle and that they were often frustrated with themselves.
“I was really frustrated for the first four weeks we were there… I was essentially [trying] to hold on to a process that I needed to let go of,” Schuford said.
“Like [Schuford, for] the first three [or] four weeks, I was really not happy with anything I was creating in the studio,” Baldwin agreed. However, they both said they managed to get a hang of it by relaxing, slowing down and using what they had available.
Sokolsky faced a different set of obstacles. He worked in Budapest during this time. He was excited to learn about the museum industry there; however, he found the art scene had been stifled by bureaucracy and politics.
“Curators have to deal with, most significantly, politics that don’t support arts education and politics that don’t give money at all,” Sokolsky said. In spite of this frustrating reality, Sokolsky was inspired by the many curators he met who found ways to show the work of artists they believed in despite the politics and financial difficulty.
Sokolsky explained that, after a lot of thought, he settled on the name “Between Chance and Control” for the show. The name aptly describes both the art and the experiences that led to its creation.
Andres’s art consists mostly of colorful tapestries. Forms in watercolor that she allows to run into natural shapes are accentuated with beautiful, rich oil-paint colors. She goes into these freer forms with more precise and deliberate detail in charcoal.
Sokolsky took note of this combination of coincidence and agency in Andres’s art. He explained that, after thinking about it, he realized that this held true for all the artists’ work in one way or another.
Baldwin’s work in the show is mostly sculptural art that she crafted out of found objects during her time in Germany. She explained that while exploring one day, she came across an abandoned factory. She decided to go back later and look inside. Along with some very cool pictures, she found a few objects such as wire and wood pieces to use in her art.