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With The Bear Analysis

Decent Essays

The new exhibit at the HCC Central Art Gallery discusses the possibilities of engineered wood after it no longer serves its original purpose.
Wood has been an important construction material since humans first built shelters, tools, and furniture. Yet no structure can last forever, and once a building has fallen, or a table is no longer suitable, the materials are tossed aside, discarded.
There they lay to deteriorate, unless broken down and used as raw material for another purpose. “With The Grain” is an exhibition about that repurposing. Eight artists, Raina Chamberlain, Dan Havel, Alex Larsen, Jesse Lott, Edward Lane McCartney, Page Piland, Patrick Renner and Dean Ruck, use reclaimed wood to recontextualize our interaction with the product. The materials are given a new life in the public space.
A number of significant pieces fill the room. Center stage greeting every visitor of the exhibition stands “Blake’s Griffin”, a mythical griffin with a long beak and tail. Jesse Lott, an artist with a long and wide-ranging …show more content…

The strips run from each side merging in the center at a crest which rises off of the wall in the shape of a long bulging wave. Adjacent to this piece and also bulging from its wall hanging is “Extrusion Study: untitled” a sculpture which seems to be destroying itself from the inside out. The supporting base is filled with cement which is bursting against the thin wooden strips holding it together. The wood is from Alex’s grandfathers barn, which was completely torn down some time ago, but Larson had developed a sentiment for the place and wanted give the material a functional reassignment. He acknowledges the previous history of the piece, and also comments on the practice of using reclaimed wood. “It’s easier to find something and make things out of it than to sit around and make things from

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