"Parterre," an exhibit by artist Lauren Fensterstock that raises the question of how man fits in with?and attempts to control?nature, opens today at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
The museum invited Fensterstock to browse through its archived works last summer in hopes that she would respond creatively to them. When Fensterstock came to the museum in August 2007, she knew that she was most interested in works of art depicting nature but wanted to be open to what she found.
"I became fascinated with two sets of prints: 'Views of the Chateau and Gardens of Ruiel' engraved by Israel Silvestre and Nicholas and Adam Parelles, and 'Victoria Regia or Great Water Lily of America' by William Sharp," Fensterstock wrote in the artist's statement she released for the exhibit. "Both are exquisitely rendered and illustrate man's reshaping of nature to express his own sense of place in the natural order."
Inspired by these works, Fensterstock designated a place for them in her collection and created two installations of her own. The first, called "Horizon/Versailles," involves lines of cubic zirconium rhinestones that are laid out to create a horizon around the room and conclude with a groundplan of the Palace at Versailles. The second, "Lily Pond," is a large structure that sits in the center of the room and simulates a pond filled with lily pads, flowers, and rocks.
In addition to charcoal piles that simulate rock and Plexiglas that simulates water, Fensterstock created the lily pads and flowers in her work out of quilled paper. The technique of quilling involves rolling, shaping, and pasting paper together to make a certain design.
"Because the 'Horizon/Versailles' piece is so structured, I wanted the lily pond, in contrast, to be a little bit dark, murky, messy, and mysterious. With the lily pond, I wanted to have a sense of the Amazonian water lilies to be mysterious, overly dramatic, and a little gothic. I wanted nature to express something a little human. I wanted to show a human landscape and not a natural one. I wanted to look at man's role in cultivating nature," Fensterstock said.
Curatorial assistant Kacy Karlen, who does writing and research for artworks in the museum, said she found this artist's view of nature "particularly interesting because she's including implements that are materialistic; nature becomes a fetish."
Fensterstock continued her theme of man cultivating nature with two drawings using ink and gouache. The first is based off the cover of the ninth edition of James Gairdner's "Houses of Lancaster and York," with "The Conquest and Loss of France," a 19-century book bound in green levant with gold tooling and inlaid design. In Fensterstock's rendition, "War of the Roses," a group of flowers grow upward out of a black space. Her second drawing, "Fountains," presents a series of fountains arranged against a green background.
Finally, a small group of European watches and rings from the eighteenth century led Fensterstock to produce three small sculptures for the rest of "Parterre" called the "What Happens" series: the pieces include two rotten potatoes and one decayed banana, each inlaid with a series of precious gems.
Like the contradictions between the chaos that reigns over nature and the order man tries to impose on it, Fensterstock noted contradictory elements inherent in her smaller sculptures.
"I like the idea that contradictions can coexist so in some ways," she said. "Rather than clarify some things, I wanted to show that the world can be more complex."
These "What Happens" sculptures, according to Karlen, blur the line between what's attractive and what's repulsive.
A resident of Portland since 2000, Fensterstock has gained national recognition within the past decade. Once an instructor at the Maine Center for the Arts, Fensterstock has degrees in metal-smithing and jewelry, though her most recent work with quilling and drawing has led her to study the decadence of nature.
"Parterre" will be open until January 11, 2009 in the Halford Gallery at the Walker Art Building.