‘Downstairs Mixup’ shows sexual curiosity

Nine students have adopted the perspective of the opposite gender — at least when it comes to creating their art.

The Downstairs Mix-Up show featuring the work of Sculpture MFA students opens from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Friday. The exhibit will be located at the Fuller Projects inside McCalla School and is free and open to the public.

The students’ pieces embody the themes of gender and sexual curiosity and how these factors play a role in identity according to a press release. More specifically, they each created a self-portrait in the opposite gender.

Third year MFA student Matthew Meers said the diversity in interpretation is what will make the show exciting for viewers.

“It is up to the individual artist to determine whether this definition manifests itself as a literal sculpture of one’s hand, as a curated collection of objects that speak to one’s imagined ‘other’ gender identity or a performance piece, in which anything goes,” Meers said.

From wood to steel to stone and ceramic, Meers pointed out the variety of mediums utilized in the discipline.

“The language of sculpture has too many dialects to speak with one voice,” he said.
For second year graduate student in sculpture Suzanne Wyss, inspiration comes from the natural world.

“Nature is one of my main inspirations due to its intricate structures, intense layering and also growth by destruction,” she said.

The MFA work will be displayed along work from a professional. Scottish artist David Constable is the current artist-in-residence in the Program for International Visiting Artist-in-Residence and has been living in Collins Living-Learning Center since the beginning of the semester.

He will not be showing his usual paintings and drawings, however.

Constable’s pieces in the show are large-scale and intricate paper sculptures. Wyss marked it as a strange yet exciting pairing for the students. Meers said he admired the complexities of Constable’s pieces.

“His art is infused with various industrial tapes and plastic strips — things that are ‘artless’ — and arrives at a familiar pictorial space of his adopted home of West Virginia,” Meers said. “I find that his work becomes richer through investigation.”