Generation CSA, installation: digital drawings, Lucite tubes, LED lights, optical fiber, five15 Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona, 2013.Author’s Note: As I walked through various Roosevelt Row galleries last First Friday, one in particular caught my eye. I quickly scooped up Mary Shindell’s business card and received the opportunity to interview her last week. Enjoy the feature below and make sure to check out her gallery this Saturday.
For artist Mary Shindell, drawings grow far past the two-dimensional paper she’s working with. They expand in all directions, sometimes towards her and sometimes sporadically all around the room. Attempting to capture this vision, Shindell realized she had to deconstruct different elements of her sketches, taking each individual piece from the background or foreground and making it its own work of art.
Using one of her landscape pieces for inspiration, she began rolling up her drawings and putting them in lucite tubes, creating cacti that she then illuminated with LED light and fiber-optics.
“When I started doing installation, I wanted drawing to be the most important part of it but I wanted the drawing to sort of explode off the page. I didn’t want them to just be confined to the rectangular shape and I figured I could do that with installation,” she said.
Instead of drawing lines for her pieces, she constructed them out of optical fiber. Eventually she created multiple installations,
Saguaro Stand, installation: digital drawings, styrene, Lucite tubes, LED lights, optical fiber, granite bases, 7h.x24w.x18’d, The Ice House, Phoenix, Arizona, 2011.helping them evolve into her “Saguaro Stand” installation. When she displayed her pieces, people loved that they could see both her drawings and sculptural pieces.
“That just sort of opened up a different way of thinking for me,” she said.
But Shindell never thought she would create installations herself. Working towards her Masters in Fine Arts at Arizona State University, she became very protective of her two-dimensional artist title. Over time, however, she became so enthralled with drawing that she wanted to push it even further.
She needed a space to experiment. Roosevelt Row’s five15 gallery allowed he to do so. Her next concept involved the expensive nature of quality art. She set out to make something people could afford to take home without compromising how she created it. Constructing flower pots and other plant-life out of fiber-optics, Shindell created a high-tech garden. Launching on June 1, “Priced to Move,” was a huge success. After First Friday, half the show was gone, forcing her to recreate not only the space but also some of her pieces. Although tiring, she said she thoroughly enjoyed herself.
“It was really refreshing - people were so happy that there was something under $2,000 that they could buy,” she said.
“Priced to Move” was the starting point of Shindell’s desire to make her art interactive. Allowing the audience to take hold of remote controls, viewers were able to change the colors and become part of the gallery itself. This led her to her latest project: Generation CSA.
Priced to Move, installation: digital drawings, Lucite tubes, LED lights, optical fiber, five15 Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona, 2013.Shindell comes from families that, up until her parents’ generation, had farmed. Therefore, agriculture, gardening and fresh vegetables became a tradition of sorts in Shindell’s life. She saw the importance of home cooking and garden-tending but also realized the difficulties of keeping up with those activities in modern times.
“I love all of the beauty of gardening and I love the products of gardening but I understand and accept the fact that that hasn’t been my profession or my job and how difficult it would be if it was or if I were to try to do it now... I have this sort of real appreciation for the people who do it,” she said.
To create a visual of this abstract notion, Shindell decided to create organic pieces out of high-tech installation materials in order to demonstrate the struggle her generation faces. Weaving in the interactive element, she once again used multiple remote controls to change the color of the lights and also used a variety of background noises. From birds chirping to a huge rain storm rolling in, sounds of nature that both aid and hinder gardening loop throughout the exhibit.
“I’m using something really organic with something really high-tech. Some people just get the organic part of it and some people are very concerned with the engineering of the technical part of it," Shindell said. "But for some people it all just comes together for them and [they see] that dichotomy between the fact that these are computer-generated with LED lights and optical fiber and that almost makes the organic part of it more important. So [I love] watching people pull [it all] together.”
Open to the public now, Generation CSA is located at 515 E. Roosevelt and can be viewed this Saturday, September 28, from 1 to 5 pm. Some pieces are available to purchase instantly or through contacting her at her website, here.
Generation CSA, installation: digital drawings, Lucite tubes, LED lights, optical fiber, five15 Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona, 2013.Shindell encouraged the new generation of artists studying at ASU with this advice:
“I think [artists] should always be open to whatever comes along. Don’t be too protective of what you learned in school. That’s not the end of being an artist, that’s sort of where you figure out how much it’s going to take to be an artist. You’re going to learn technical things [in college] but once you get out, just let yourself be open to what others are doing. Always try to keep in contact with [other] artists and watch what people are doing. I love seeing what other artists are doing and it makes me feel so wonderful to ... see them do something new and different. It’s inspirational to always try to keep yourself connected to artists who have the same dedication to [the field.]”
Contact me at adersch@asu.edu or @AlexDersch with questions, suggestions or comments. The more communication I get from you the better Eye Candy will be. Thank you!
