Faculty Show

Brian Snapp, Associate Professor - Department of Art & Art History

This work comes from a need to move myself towards a more compassionate lifestyle. I am no longer interested in trying to create balance in my life. I have yet to live in a world disproportionately directed towards compassion to know whether balance is important or attainable. So, in order to see if too much compassion in the world would be a horrible way of life, I built this installation. It is meant as a place for anyone interested in moving towards a compassionate imbalance to sit and contemplate action.

In order to activate a large shift, smaller shifts in thinking must occur. To start this shift I have imposed images, signs and symbols on blocks of clay to trigger ideas towards healing and outward compassion. This is not a new cult movement. I’m agnostic. I don’t believe anyone will be cured of illness or affliction directly from participating with this work. If they are, I will be canonized. Until then, I do believe in the positive messages or ideas signs and symbols can generate towards changing (curing) social ills. I also believe these ideas, whether in this form or another can and should be presented through art.

The carved markings on the clay surfaces were rendered in a way to communicate agitation and immediacy. The images of medicinal plants are used here not in an attempt at physical curing but for curing certain metaphorical ailments. Most of the plants I chose have been used as purging agents or soothing tonics such as Spikenard, which helps loathings, swelling or gnawings in the stomach and soothes the brain. The signs and symbols I have chosen are also gestures towards ideas. They come from disparate vocabularies and can have multiple meanings. Some of the signs are hobo markings used to describe the hospitableness of people. Some of the symbols relate to religious ideas of enlightenment or cultural ideas of wisdom. And, still others come from ancient runes, alchemical texts, musical notations and emergency ground to air signals. I have included a key to these images with definitions to help the viewer decipher and give power to the symbols and signs.

Curing is a process. It is a process that takes time and is generally achieved through aging. The aging process is taken to a point of refinement just short of rotten decay. Some of these ideas have been curing for a long time but not beyond their usefulness. We are living in a time when social curing is needed. I am an optimist however not a Pollyanna (this is where the meat hooks come in). If we don’t do something soon to change the politics of intolerance we are all dead meat.

So, please sit down, relax, think and activate.

Brian Snapp
January 2006