As I’ve mentioned in recent posts, I was offered an opportunity in the middle of this semester, late-February, to have my work in a show with six other first- and second-year MFA students.

It was quite a bit of extra stress to get new work ready to show in this short time-frame, but totally worth it, of course. I’m grateful to Amber Phelps Bondaroff for inviting MFA students to show their work.

I suggested the theme of “endings and beginnings” for this show to the others, and everyone agreed, seeing possibilities to fit their work into it. This is the show’s statement I wrote:

endings + beginnings is an exhibition showcasing the works of Shima Aghaaminiha, Shamim Aghaaminiha, Larissa Kitchemonia, Raegan Moynes, Alyssa Scott, Amy Snider and Brenda Watt, a group of emerging artists and artists in the beginning of their careers as candidates in the MFA program at the University of Regina.

Our lives are filled with beginnings and endings that result from changes of all sorts. In our recent time, the Covid19 pandemic has imposed another ending and a beginning on us. Like with all defining events, our lives now have a line drawn through them: pre-Covid/post-Covid. What makes this situation exceptional is that these new definitions apply to every person’s experience. Other global changes, political, technological, and environmental, are also looming or already happening at what feels like a continuously increasing pace. These constant changes to our lives and our understanding of the world lead us to the question of where one contemporary moment ends and another begins. The works in endings + beginnings are each reflections on this question.

I suppose my work fits into this theme’s “endings” component. 😉

I just posted about one of the two projects I installed in the show, a set of three plates title “Keep it Up,” “Hold it Together,” and “Build a Wall.” Here, I’ll summarize the work I installed of my second project I’ve been developing this term, “Dust.”

Arriving at the gallery to install, spatially-challenged husband and broken plate in tow, I got to work creating pieces of the project “Dust” I’ve been experimenting with all semester.

The plinth that I was expecting to use for a “Dust Plate” had been taken by another student (we had to book individual appointments to install due to Covid), so I was left with either one that was quite low to the ground or one that was much larger in width (more rectangular) than I’d expected to have. Fortunately, I’d brought the bowl-mold with me as well as the plate-mold, and I immediately realized that I was being told (by the art gods?) to go for it and create both a plate and a bowl in this gallery space. I took the larger plinth and got to work. This was my first time trying to use this mold in a while; the previous time had been a complete flop.

I got them set up and then left, hoping very much that when I returned the next day, they would hold their form while I slid their molds out from under them.

And did they?

They did!

It’s kind of funny that “Dust Plate” has cracks in it… given my other project’s beginnings.

As with the other pieces I have in this show, I know I could develop this idea further and improve the end-product, the objects themselves. These aren’t perfect, and they’re far from what I’d originally envisioned: a plate that would look more perfectly plate like until it would blow away (on video), revealing that it was made entirely of dust. As with the other work in this show, though, I’m satisfied enough with the result of “Dust” after three months of experimenting and thinking about it. I’m now curious to see what others will say about it. I’m happy I decided to find and use local, brown-coloured clay, and I’m relieved that I found a technique that allows this clay dust to hold a shape. At least, these two pieces had held up for one day when I last saw them… I’ll return to the gallery when it reopens on Tuesday and see what I find on this plinth.

Now I need to turn my attention to writing up an “End of Semester Review Statement” by Tuesday. How will I summarize all that I’ve learned this semester in just 600 words?