This July and August, two new exhibits are on display at the Waldron Arts Center in downtown Bloomington. Both exhibits are free to the public and will close in August. Channels: Conjuring Unborn Futures is open until Aug. 19 and We Paint… Out of the Box! is open until Aug. 5.
Waldron Arts Center is currently operating on summer hours, according to the Center’s press release. Public summer timings include: 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday. Weekend visitors are required to schedule appointments ahead of time by emailing gallery@seeconstellation.org
Channels: Conjuring Unborn Futures by Yunjun La-Mei Woo
On display in the Waldron’s Rosemary P. Miller Gallery is Yunjun La-Mei Woo’s exhibit titled Channels: Conjuring Unborn Futures. La-Mei Woo, a multidisciplinary artist, recently obtained a Ph.D. in Communication and Culture from Indiana University and is an Associate Professor of Art at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
“My work engages in questions of what it means to be human or otherwise, using metaphors of contagion, illness or mediumship often times,” La-Mei said. She is also a cultural studies researcher and examines discourse around female mediumship, contagion and how people understand themselves as human or supernatural.
A sculpturer by trade, her exhibit at the Waldron features a little bit of everything. Many of the pieces in the exhibit are instillations, there is also an audio piece and a video segment.
Research is a key component in La-Mei Woo’s work. Often, her pieces start with an idea and she researches what medium might work best to convey her message. The conceptual foundation of Channels: Conjuring Unborn Futures stems from her doctoral studies at IU but it only took about six months to create the pieces themselves, La-Mei Woo said.
One of the installations in La-Mei Woo’s exhibit is titled “Stigmata.” This installation is made up of incense pieces, which La-Mei Woo created after researching the process.
“I did not know anything about incense making,” La-Mei Woo said. “So, I started learning about what consists of the whole process and how I might be able to actually make them burn — which is more difficult than one might think.”
The works on display in La-Mei Woo’s exhibit are inspired by her maternal grandmother, who was a Korean Shaman. “Stigmata” reflects the stigmatization of shamanism in both Korean and Western culture.
La-Mei Woo’s family did not want her to make any work on her grandmother’s shamanism, as there is a fear of female offspring inheriting her grandmother’s calling. Instead, La-Mei Woo decided to read into and play into the idea of the “perceived curse” and reclaim it as something celebratory that could be empowering, she said. “Stigmata,” the incense pieces which are burned during the exhibit duration, represent both the stigma and sacredness of shamanism.
“At the end of the exhibition after all of them burn, we’ll have this “stigmata” on the concrete floor of that little room inside the exhibition space,” La-Mei Woo said. “It is removable, but the idea is to create those markings that could be read as stigmatizing marks on one hand, but on the other hand as the sacred, manifestation of such power.”
The two key elements in La-Mei Woo’s work are the cultural context and the reclamation of female mediumship. “Mugu,” the center, paper installation, represents shamanic tools (similar to La-Mei Woo’s grandmother’s tools) and will be burned at the end of the exhibit. Another installation titled “Channels” consists of sculptures made of used cookware that are put together in such a way that they could be a religious or cultural artifact, which serves as a metaphor for female mediumship in daily life.
“Ultimately, I want the show to lead visitors to a place where although they start from a particular cultural understanding, they eventually start to see connections with mediumship,” La-Mei Woo said. “Hopefully, they start making connections between seemingly opposite poles: ordinary and extraordinary, normal and abnormal, natural and supernatural.”
We Paint… Out of the Box! by the Bloomington Watercolor Society
The second summer exhibit, located in the Educational Gallery at the Waldron, features 32 pieces of art made by 21 members of the Bloomington Watercolor Society (BWS). Longtime BWS member and former President Carol Rhodes said that We Paint… Out of the Box! is the first exhibit featured in the Waldron in almost 15 years.
“Using watercolor in unconventional ways” is the primary description of the work featured in the exhibit, according to the Waldron’s press release. The exhibit chooses to focus on other talents the artists have, instead of just traditional watercolor.
“We have many artists that like to work in different mediums and sometimes those works aren’t accepted in general shows,” Rhodes said. “The exhibit is meant for BWS members, who have other works that are orphaned from specific art categories, to show their talents in other mediums.”
BWS members comprise not only of watercolor artists but also fabric artists, woodcutters, acrylic artists and mixed media artists. The opportunity to display non-traditional work was widely accepted by BWS members, who showed a lot of enthusiasm in contributing to the exhibit.
“On the Town” by Nancy Davis Metz is one of the pieces on display in the exhibit. The piece, which stands out to Rhodes for being unusual, is comprised of many mediums: watercolor, gouache, sumi ink and graphite on aquabord panel.
“It’s very spontaneous and abstract, while still having elements of realism,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes hopes the BWS exhibit increases visitors' interest in art and the artists on display. Many of the pieces on display are for sale and interested buyers can contact info@bloomingtonwatercolor.org
