Artist Lecture, Hauft, Kerry McDonnell

Counter-Reformation, wood/canvas/gesso/styrofoam/sugar/plastic, Amy Hauft, 2009

Tonight's artist lecture was at the Anderson Gallery for VCU faculty member Amy Hauft and her peice Counter Re-formation. This was really a wonderful experience to be able to view the artist's work as it is meant to be presented within a gallery space and hear her discuss it simultaneously. There is really a vast difference between hearing an artist lecture with her work in the studio space and being presented a powerpoint of images in an auditorium.

Counter Re-formation is a large installation comprised of a massive, oddly shaped table covered in white canvas. Atop the table on all of it's strange extensions were what look to be dunes of sugar, with a sugar-cast spiral staircase that sat in the middle section of the table on a larger dune. Hauft discussed she tries to recreate landscapes, describing this particular piece as something very bleak; the sugar mounds representing dunes, glaciers or mountain ranges. The walls surrounding the installation were painted white, the very back wall painted a faint grey-blue. The color pallate was very soothing and contributed to the over all bleak-ness of the landscape Hauft was trying to represent. Apart from the main installation was a white, floor-to-ceiling spiral staircase whose purpose was to "reveal" the landscape to the viewer. Hauft made the point that when one is within a landscape it's hard to understand the spacial relationship and see the entire composition. The aerial view was meant to help the audience organize the space visually.

Hauft's discussion about the background of her piece was informative and interesting. A majority of the concept behind this piece was inspired by the Baroque and the excess related to that era. The shape of the table is a less symmetrical and more modern replica of a table used to serve desert during King Henry the XIV's rule in England. During that time, the table would've been decorated with sugar sculptures (which she pointed out mimics the look of porcelain). She also mentioned that during that time, French wood-working apprentices would create a perfect spiral staircase as their means of passage into starting their own business and leaving the apprenticeship. The interesting juxtaposition of this piece is the references to the Baroque excess, which is countered by the bleakness of the landscape. Hauft discussed that this reductive quality is what makes this piece contemporary.

Hauft spoke a lot about using arcane materials and using whatever was suitable for the project/concept and that she would also try to relate said material to the concept. However, the only piece of sugar in the entire installation was the small spiral latter in the middle of the piece which was, sadly, very disappointing. The dunes were created by sculpting styrofoam and coating it in gesso. She then sprinkled shaved plastic on the styrofoam forms to make it more dimensional and sugar-like. What's ironic is that she's creating these landscapes with materials that are detrimental to the environment. The work itself was well made and pleasing to the eye, but with the absence of sugar it really negated the work and her process of creation.