Metro Pulse/Artbeat/Place and Imagery

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Where place and images converge

by Heather Joyner

If you've not explored UT lately, now is a good time to do so. Although Knoxville's campus is by no means lifeless, parking is easier and the pace more relaxed in summer months. There's also less of that "monkey island" division between hoards of students and the rest of the city so palpable throughout the regular academic year. Budget cuts aside, there's usually a new building or activity to check out, and exploring unimpeded can be a pleasure.

Speaking of things new, a small but interesting exhibit currently occupies the third floor hallway of the sleek Burchfiel Geography Building, and it combines an unusual variety of elements. Titled Place And Imagery, the show represents an ongoing collaboration between artists and geographers. Situated on Phil Fulmer Way across from "the money wall" (or "wailing wall," depending on one's finances), Burchfiel is convenient to Cumberland Avenue.

At first glance, the exhibit appears slapped-together and incoherent. After all, we're dealing with disciplines often pitted against one another (when science is reduced to fact and art to fiction). But there are less-limited perspectives. As paleontologist and writer Stephen Jay Gould, whose death this week saddened many, has asserted, "Intellectual life should not be construed as two cultures of science and humanities at war, or even at variance...science and art meld in continuity. The sequence of superposition on this rock—an unbroken transition from things of nature to things of art, flesh to rock to paper to ink—illustrates the embedding of mind in nature" (from the book Crossing Over). Participants in Place And Imagery, be they artists, professors, scientists, or students, embrace an interaction as intriguing as it is complex.

Jean Hess, Kay Palmateer, Moema Furtado, and Clay Hensley represent the art side of the show, and geographer Lydia Pulsipher and archeologist/anthropologist Mac Goodwin are mentors to graduate students Toby Applegate and Lindsay Holderfield. Displacement is a unifying theme, and the above individuals have produced drawings, photography, maps, found objects, and/or painting to convey their topics. Whereas the artists respond to a single place, the non-artists address different locations. The shared place introduced by Hess, a ramshackle house at Milligan College near Johnson City, has become central to her "Lost State Project" (relating to the artist's ancestry as well as the historical Lost State of Franklin). Partners Pulsipher and Goodwin present documentation of Galways Plantation on Montserrat alongside other Caribbean sites referenced by Holderfield. Applegate's focus is the farther-flung agricultural architecture of Slovenia. It's a fascinating mix.

The Galways Plantation material marks a decades-long examination of what began as a slave population transported to the West Indies to support a sugar-based economy. Writes Pulsipher, "...all human environment interactions on Galways Mountain [destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 1997], whether during slavery times or in the present, were circumscribed by power wielded at different scales from the local to the global. Much of daily life has in one way or another related to resisting that power." An elevation drawing of a sugar-boiling house and a diagram illustrating the 18th Century division of land are accompanied by snapshots of islanders who have assisted with research.

Holderfield's juxtaposition of photographs promoting Caribbean tourism and shots from everyday life alludes to the more contemporary, "neo-colonial," travel-based economy. Double-sided postcard-sized images hung from the ceiling quiver in an air-conditioned breeze; what looks like travel agency ephemera bites back upon closer examination. There's no mistaking Holderfield's ironic message as she contrasts slick brochure imagery with portraits of natives simply living their lives rather than smiling for the camera, stereotypically eager to serve. More than competent, Holderfield's pictures are energetic and memorable.

An ocean away are Applegate's kozolecs—Slovenian hayrack structures resembling covered bridges on dry land. Regarding the omnipresent folk structure, Applegate remarks, "...more than a simple agricultural building, [the kozolec] is a performative act of national and ethnic identity." His poster featuring a smattering of photos of kozolecs in various locations speaks of human adaptability, revealing a range of designs with practical and cultural significance.

As Knoxville's unofficial "Taxonomist of the Sublime," Hess bridges the art/science gap. With an educational background in cultural anthropology and an impressive dossier as a painter, she painstakingly orders information that ends up either visible or obscured in her multi-layered pieces. Her approach to using items from an old house, like that of a scientist, is both measured and experimental.

Hess' own Physica Sacra, her "Gaia.com Series"—combining the term for Earth Mother with something computer-related, a metaphor for mediation between ourselves and the natural world—includes the exhibited "M9: Celestial Pool." Despite its grid pattern, "Pool" has more to do with spiritual rather than systematic archaeology. In it one finds identifiable plant specimens, and like leaves frozen in the surface of a pond, they seem suspended in time (or existing in eternity, as theology would have it). Resins and multiple coats of Verithane lend "Pool" its remarkable depth and otherworldly glow.

Furtado, Hensley, and Palmateer likewise use scraps of things found in the mess that was a Victorian house when Hess' biological grandparents attended Milligan College. Furtado, a UT art instructor who left Brazil almost 30 years ago, displays abstract works on wood featuring plastic flowers and pieces of metal and linoleum. Hensley's canvas sections encrusted with wallpaper, plaster, and resin in Mediterranean colors look like they could have been unearthed at Pompeii. KMA exhibit specialist and artist Palmateer presents a battered red dress found at the Milligan house, accompanied by an iconic painting of the dress floating in an Appalachian landscape. She has also assembled a series of moody Polaroids with close-ups of the garment—again, the part/counterpart approach familiar to scientists.

In Crossing Over, Gould writes, "the vast majority of organisms leave no trace of their existence whatever, and our fossil record preserves the pieces and activities of a tiny minority. But sometimes, against all the power of time's decay, a precious item from the past resists destruction and stays put in all its detailed glory...[mocking] entropy with panache, thus thrilling our senses and lightening our spirits." Like maybe a red dress or a kozolec—bringing together place and imagery for us to contemplate and enjoy.