VISUAL ART

What Makes Everyday Objects Art?

One Portland art show takes a deep dive into the commonplace to explore relationships, memory transference—and goblets!

By Brandon Staley January 5, 2016

Until Death Do Us Part II, by Silvia Levenson

“In my work I use images to say aloud what is generally unsaid," says Levenson. "I explore this unspeakable space, that is sometimes so small or so big, placed between what can be seen see or guessed. There is the idea of family as a sanctuary, while the evidence shows that it is also a dangerous place. Family imperils lives and breeds some of the most drastic forms of violence perpetrated against the female gender.”

Reality, by Silvia Levenson

Says Levenson: “I explore dynamics in the couple relationship, those thin differences between what we really feel and what we express. Sometimes it’s hard to face our feelings. Since we wish to “fit” in the happy forever picture, we just pretend that things are okay. So, here I focus on the very subtle tensions going through relationships.”

Separation Anxiety_06, by Heidi Schwegler

“I am interested in the lives of objects and the transference of memory," says Schwegler. "In our day to day, our memories fill the spaces around us, they seep into the carpet and become crystallized in the objects that bear witness to our lives. Because of this, these particular things act upon us as we forget, instigating memory. And therein lies the transference: the thing becomes a body, the body a thing.”

Err, by Heidi Schwegler

Says Schwegler: “My style as an artist is a hybrid of conceptual art and craft. It is important that the objects I fabricate are well made and at the same time provocative and meaningful. In reaction to the ubiquity of the disposed commodity now empty of use value, I am interested in making beautiful objects that deal with those private tragedies that make us distressingly aware of our own mortality. I abstract the found object into something new, while also taking care to maintain its original context.”

Found Wanting, by Heidi Schwegler

“As an urban archaeologist, I prefer to mine the peripheral ruin, the discarded stuff that is ignored and considered worthless," says Schwegler. "By reassigning the value and purpose of something recognizable, I emphasize the perforation between what it was and what it has now become. I find the fragment to be a resource full of creative potential, in that its story is no longer complete, and this malleable state allows it to remain pervious to the imagination. Objects that are normally overlooked, like a discarded and rotting mattress, a crushed lampshade buried at the Goodwill Bins or a gas can used for target practice in Mt Hood National Forest, are instantly evocative.”

3rd Circle Goblet, by Dante Marioni

Marioni’s 3rd Circle Goblet is the result of a nearly ten-year project between the artist and Bullseye’s glass chemist, Sam Andreakos, which sought to establish new glass colors using the goblet archetype.

I’d wager that right now, even as you’re reading this, you’re surrounded by a plethora of objects. These objects—your tablet screen, the chair you’re slouching in (straighten up!), the half-empty coffee cup—were designed by people, for people, using generations of learned marketing and manufacturing know-how. But we rarely think about those objects—just the purposes they serve.

Simple, household objects are the subject of Bullseye Project’s latest exhibit, though. In The Emotional Life of Objects, artists Silvia Levenson, Heidi Schwegler, and Dante Marioni offer their own mixed media interpretations of the objects we so rarely take time to examine.

Bullseye Project's The Emotional Life of Objects is on show January 6—March 26.

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