Claire Stephen's Exhibition: "Trace"

  

 Claire Stephens’ MFA Midway Exhibition at Sierra Arts Gallery was one of the most interesting contemporary exhibitions I have seen lately. Stephens draws inspiration from the landscape that surrounds her, but does it in a highly unique way in her usage of varying medium and display.

   Landscape inspired works are something that I have personally never been drawn to. In Northern Nevada we see a great deal of landscape and environmental work and I have yet to be intrigued by any of it, other than Stephen’s work.

   I also intentionally did not read into her intent or artist statement before writing this, as I wanted to give my own unpolluted interpretation of her work.

   I think that this has a lot to do with her usage of materials and installation techniques. I was particularly drawn to her fabric tree installation and feather glass paintings.

    I have a supreme interest in fairy tales and fairy tale imagery, so I personally related to her tree installation. I am not sure if she intended for her trees to relate to fairy tales, but to me they represented the scenery of the fairy tales I have been studying for my own thesis. I loved the sheerness and fragility of them as well as their movement as patrons walked through.

   I noticed a physical theme throughout her work as the majority of the materials had an almost feminine fragility about them. This is also an area I have been interested in as of late: works that are feminine in nature, but not overtly feminist. I think many young female artists are working within this style. I’ve noticed that works done within this type of style also seem to have this nostalgic yearning in them, but it is hard to place what the work or artist is nostalgic for exactly. I would include the work I make in this as well.

 Trees and feathers make up the bulk of her subject matter and are created with a very delicate hand. Much of the work seems like if you breath on it too hard it will come crumbling down around you. For Stephens’ work, the nostalgia seems to be for a beauty of the surrounding world/landscape that is almost either stuck in time, or a time she has created from her own view of the world.