Mavericks
Photo/Media Art from UT Arlington
Brazos Gallery – Richland College
February 8, 2013 – March 1, 2013
Reception: February 9, 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Richland College is proud to present Cassandra Emswiler. A recent MFA graduate from the University of Texas at Dallas, Cassandra will exhibit recent work based on quotidian details, mass production and personal memories.
The artist explains,
“While moving to Lake Texoma over the summer, I gave up my collection of found and store bought flooring tiles. In its place, I’ve begun designing and printing my own tiles, searching for the ideological origins of all the boring and predictable motifs that find their way onto mass produced flooring. These new photographic prints are concerned with how wilderness ends up grafted onto symbolic, orderly space, how an impression of nature is trained to fit within a grid—of a garden, or a bathroom floor—which allows for strangely controlled flourishes and emblems that are part of our collective memory.
Each tile mimics contemporary design trends while directly quoting historical French formal gardens from the 17th and 18th century. Looking at engravings of many of these garden ground plans is like looking at an assortment of flooring tiles from Home Depot.
Beneath the white graphic motifs are snapshots of landscapes, which interest me for their banal qualities and personal significance as documents of lakes I have visited in Texas and Michigan. Designing tiles has become a way for me to quietly combine traces of my own biography and family mythology with my concerns for the public built environment and photography’s relationship to faux veneer building materials.
When I am out on Lake Texoma in my kayak, I dream I am in Rock Harbor off the shores of Isle Royale. In visiting and documenting each of these lakes, they have all become the same place.
