Announcing the arrival of Sydnie Waldron’s exhibit, “No Longer, Not Yet” on display until July 23!
Sydnie Waldron’s Artist Statement:
My recent work explores “liminality” and liminal spaces in regards to the physical body. These bodies begin to morph as a result of the things around them. Events. Places. People. Liminal spaces lie at the threshold between two or more things, places, ways of being, or moments in time. They stand as doorways and passages, and are characterized by feelings of strange familiarity in combination with the feeling that there is something missing. They are spaces where you have left something behind, but you are not fully in something else, or perpetual states of being between more or less stable planes of existence. Because they are caught in between unstable phases of being, the bodies begin to morph and shift between their own physical states. In my recent discoveries, I have found that the spaces, experiences, and bodies I am exploring are characterized by three distinct phases, all different, and all imperative. The first is separation, wherein we are torn from the identity, place, or way of being we understood. Separation is followed by transition, which is what characterizes the liminal being. It establishes the being as bordering on two things, not fitting completely into either. The final stage is return. Return is not quite as easily defined as the other stages, purely because there are no boundaries. Return is individual. It is shaped and molded by the one experiencing it. It is coming into one’s own, knowing that there is room for flux. For change. For instability. That even if none of the planes we exist on are entirely stable, existing in between is not as dangerous as we may think. The bodies exist in a constant flow between these three phases. What does it mean for the body to be liminal? For it to be stretched and molded by the environment that envelops it? Can our own ways of being be liminal? How do we continue to exist in unstable phases? The creatures and beings that are born through this body of work are seeking the answers to these questions, and hoping that through each other, they might find the answer.
Sydnie is from Alliance and is currently living and working in Hastings and is a Bachelor of Arts candidate at Hastings College.
Don’t forget! Archetypes and Eternal Stories is on display until June 25th in the upper Skala and Garwood Galleries. The exhibit is the work of Shaun Roberts, Associate Professor at Stephen F. Austin State University.
Shaun Roberts Artist Statement:
“These works developed from parable and myth, embodying a surreal world where dream-like, dystopian settings subvert reality. Through a mixture of fact, fiction, allegory and imagination, the tragic stories depict a broken civilization, suggestive of the challenges and cultural unrest we currently face. An underlying sense of hope emerges from their dystopian experiences. Their stories are our stories and speak to our place in the universe, our shared humanity and the struggles we all face in maintaining it.”