Deanna Barnes Blog Assignment #1

Professor Marilee Salvator's exhibition was put together beautifully. As a whole the exhibition is cohesive, each piece relates to the other through the central theme of expansion and growth. The title of the exhibit, "Prolific Growth", summarizes the entire exhibit but the theme of growth is most obviously seen in the first piece, "Growth Patterns". In the other pieces the idea of growth is a concept represented through the images of cancerous cells as well as other natural and biological images. Each piece, except the first, was framed in simple white frames, which allow the viewer to appreciate the colors displayed. Each piece has a different color scheme, usually either pale muted colors or vibrant colors though the artist does not use many bright colors. All of the colors seen in the different pieces can also be seen in the first piece, which brings all the others together.

The piece entitled "Composition 23" was particularly stunning to me because even though most of the colors are so muted the presence of a brighter coral colored layer made each of the other layers stand out. The series of layers in this particular piece look like corals, sea urchins, nets and sea creatures. The first layer seems to be of a gray base with white holes, on top of this I see gray blue spots with an elaborate design. In the next three layers it was not always easy for me to distinguish which came first, seemingly the next layer was of smaller charcoal circles, then a coral colored net and lastly it appears that a layer of larger charcoal colored globular images. The techniques used in this piece are digital, relief and multiple shaped etching plates.

The lecture given by Professor Salvator was very descriptive of her theme and her personal inspirations for the exhibit. I was grateful for all of the examples of natural growth that she gave, which really helped me to appreciate her exhibit even more. Even though she described her concept incredibly well, I feel I did not get a good understanding of the processes in which she created her pieces. Explaining this process would have probably taken a lot of time since the process is very time consuming.