Repurposed a hit for Matchbox
Repurposed is the kind of art that would be best enjoyed on a quiet morning when you can lie on your back, cushioned by thousands of reused plastic bags, and contemplate the mysteries and wonders of the universe as dozens of black and white photos spin above your head.
The exhibition features the union of two distinctly purposeful exhibits by Baker College senior Dolly Li and Lovett College senior Elliott SoRelle. Li's interactive shag rug made out of thousands of reused plastic bags and Suspended, SoRelle's profusion of silver gelatin cut-out prints of people and animals hanging from the ceiling.
"You can take off your shoes and walk on the rug — roll around on it. It's meant to be interactive," Li said. Li, an economics and visual arts major who patiently explained the premise of her piece to small crowds of students on Thursday, ignoring the drizzle and crackling lightning outside. The rug represents a semester's worth of careful work; she began by cutting and gluing together repurposed cardboard to form the base of the rug before freehand cutting thousands of randomly-sized circles from thousands of donated plastic bags and tacking them onto the cardboard base.
"At first, the circles were going to be random, but it looked too psychedelic. So I started over and created a pattern with the colors and textures that I had," Li said. The rug is now composed of a pattern that looks worthy of any professionally designed rug, with a large portion of red and white Target bags interspersed with the recognizably yellow Forever 21 bags and a thin ring of some dark blue bag.
As a freelance graphic designer in her spare time, Li says her focus is on design: "I really look at color, texture and pattern," she said. "This is purely aesthetic; there is no social agenda behind the piece."
The flimsy circles of plastic fluttered up around my feet as I stepped on it carefully, heeding her cautions for runaway tacks, though she has never personally gotten stuck. The piece was insanely comfortable for being made out of plastic tacked onto cardboard; I was tempted to lie on it but was discouraged by the crowds of people flowing in and out of the room. However, lying on the rug is supposed to be the true way to experience the full harmony between floor and ceiling.
"We wanted to create a vertical notion over the traditional horizontal notion so that you can start exploring space in a different way. We got so much more volume this way," SoRelle explained. SoRelle is the creator of Suspended, an amalgamation of recycled photographs that were carefully outlined and cut, then suspended from the ceiling with nearly invisible wire. The photos, twisting and turning in the slight unrest of the air, hang in unpredictable patterns from the ceiling like stagnant raindrops. There's an aura of mystery about them; from the front, you can see the gray and black detail of flamingos, models, dinosaurs and Rice students. From the back, they are simply black silhouettes floating in space.
"Anything that's not a human figure is an environment piece, in order to create an environment in the ceiling space," SoRelle said. "I tried to put some of the interesting pieces higher up so that when you look at them, you're forced to look through space taken up by other pieces … sometimes when I look up at the installation, the images start to have dynamics between each other and I start to make up stories about the pictures."
Elliott, a visual arts and biochemistry major, is currently the director of the student-run Matchbox Gallery, while Dolly serves as the assistant director. For those who have never been to the Matchbox Gallery before, it is a tiny white-washed room that used to belong to Visual Arts Professor Christopher Sperandio. Converted into a private art gallery to showcase student work in 2009 by students Logan Beck and Erin Rouse, the room currently houses Reconstructed Used Furniture.
"We unfortunately don't have the staff to keep the Matchbox open all day long like the Rice gallery," Li said. "We haven't done a lot of publicizing yet, but we were hoping that this opening would gather a lot of attention. We can only open the gallery for the opening and then private viewings if someone sends us a request."
Dolly and Elliott invite students to submit applications to mtchbxgallery@gmail.com to have their own work featured in this space. Ideally, they are looking to turn over new installations every few weeks.
Shooting an email to the Matchbox Gallery can grant you a private viewing to experience the exhibition on your own. The innovative new art installation occupying the Matchbox Gallery runs through Oct. 27.
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