2022 National Prize Show Talk: Repurposed/Reimagined

2022 National Prize Show Talk: Repurposed/Reimagined

Thursday, July 7, 7:00 - 8:00pm Eastern Time, on ZOOM 

Join us for the second of two online talks, presented as part of CAA's 2022 National Prize Show. 

Repurposed/Reimagined, focuses on the artwork of Joe Bussell (Kansas City, KS); Martha Chason-Sokol (Everett, MA); and Rebecca McGee-Tuck (Natick, MA). Join us for an informal, online discussion of how each artists transforms collected objects - including household items, litter, and other debris - into meaningful narratives on consumption and its impact on the world around us.

Please pre-register on ZOOM in order to receive the event link. 

Speakers: 

Joe Bussell's practice has spanned 45 years. He received a BFA in painting from Kansas University. From that time to the present he lived in London, on both US coasts, and a variety of cities in between. Joe worked in an AIDS hospice from 1985-1990. Then received two MFA’s one in painting the other in ceramics from Washington University in Saint Louis where he taught art. Bussell currently keeps his studio in Kansas City, Kansas and continues to exhibit in the US and Europe.

"In the process of making 2-D or 3-D art I add what makes sense and subtract what doesn’t. That is a process that can take years or realized in a day. What I add or what I keep represents my history, dreams, memories, and personal aesthetic. I want the finished piece to translate the psychological loop and tell a complete story."

Martha Chason-Sokol’s work is a commentary on over-consumption, the medicalization of feelings and societal priorities. The pieces depend on her use of unmodified color, familiarity of material and organic shape to connect the viewer visually with her subject matter. The characters are shaped by the objects from which they are built. Listing the materials within the sculpture provides the viewer further access to the narrative. Pill bottles, dishwasher parts, old lamps that both work and don’t work are titled provocatively. The stuff of our culture is transformed into fantastical shapes held together with plastic wrap and tape. The objects within the pieces are provocative; the pieces themselves are fantasy. Together they form the fairy tale of the everyday world in which we all struggle to survive or thrive.​

Rebecca McGee Tuck is a mixed media sculptor and a collector of lost objects. Her work is inspired by the bits and fragments of land and sea debris that she gathers. Every object she picks up is an emotional artifact, containing a relation to an action, a person or an intriguing unknown. The depth and textures that are built up through sculptural experiments, become a layered narrative. On the surface, the objects within may only be unwanted debris, but the sculptural outcome that is composed is a multilayered storyline of what was left behind.

Have questions? Contact Erin Becker at ebecker@cambridgeart.org