| Budding, blooming, fading, and seeding, flowers are everywhere in Arlene Shechet’s new sculptures. Creating works in bronze, rubber, textile and porcelain, Shechet has expanded her visual vocabulary to include the natural world, while remaining inspired by Buddhist philosophy. Ephemerality and fluidity move throughout the pieces. In Casting Water Shechet has devised a method of literally casting water in rubber. Deep blue liquid moves through the gallery seeping from one room to the next, creating what Anne Ellegood’s essay calls a “map of motion, each element a fingerprint of a moment.” Shechet speaks to the unique quality of attention that both the artistic and the meditative process share. In slowing down and peering into the nature of an instant, she reminds us of how compelling this kind of awareness can be. Everyday Prayer Wheel is a textile that pays homage to a fading handwritten list of wildflowers compiled by Aline Porter, wife of Eliot Porter, found by the artist on great Spruce Head Island in Maine. Skyline is an installation of scores of grey/brown porcelain vessels that evoke the recently disrupted outline of Manhattan as seen by the artist during her morning walks across the Brooklyn Bridge. Known for her use of the vessel as the metaphor for Buddhist temples, Shechet expands her references to include the contemporary urban landscape. In the bronze figures, Bud, Bloom, and Bouquet, sculptures alluding to Buddhist figures become transformed upon closer inspection into flower forms. While attention to the moment inevitably involves a sense of loss, there is also, in Shechet’s work, the unmistakable and exuberant sense of something found. |
 |
|