By Mary Cox
Honors student Mary Cox tries her absolute best to write a coherent review of David Owsley Museum of Art's new exhibit, SHIFT, in the midst of the most stressful week of the semester.
Finals week, for me, has always been the perfect time to try something new and exciting in a fleeting attempt to avoid my mounting responsibilities and fast-approaching deadlines. This year’s vice was a trip to the David Owsley Museum of Art to see this semester’s special exhibit in its last week.
Since we all diligently and thoroughly read our ‘This Week in Honors’ emails then you’ll already know the installation for this semester was titled SHIFT. The collection’s purpose, as described by the contributing artists, is to, “test our notions of scale and transparency by investigating the movement of light, movement of substance, and movement itself through space.”
As I walked through, I was dictating to myself all the faux-deep insights I planned to relay to you all. The juxtaposition of calming and unsettling images meant to represent the space at the edge of your comfort zone where growth and learning take place. Serenity is, of course, a virtue, but allow yourself to get too settled into normalcy and so begins a life of apathy and ignorance. Which is, coincidentally, my current life goals.
I prepared a syllogism about how sometimes you have to flip your perspective to fully understand something — obviously a commentary on the highly polarized political climate we’re currently navigating. You know, the idea that you should still go to your racist aunt’s barbeque this summer. To not be so quick to judge Kyle from your dance history class when he tells you Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book wasn’t even that good.
Don’t get me wrong, all of the pieces took way more talent and patience than I possess. There were several very cool pieces, and one I even felt compelled to add to my snap story even though the docent was aggressively lurking. Perhaps the reason I’ve ultimately decided to forgo a review in the usual sense is because art is, in my opinion, a very personal thing. It is not my place to speculate on the intentions of the artist nor predicate the meaning anyone else should gather. I can simply speak to what it evoked from myself. Simply put, it was pretty. I find great merit in adding beauty to this world however you know how, and so if this was a proper review there’d likely be at least three stars involved, probably more.
Unfortunately as the semester wraps up so does SHIFT’s residency at the DOMA. This means I cannot close by suggesting you go experience the installation for yourself. The dual tragedy being that you can no longer go see this interesting collection and I’m left without a tidy concluding remark. So, I guess in conclusion I’ll leave you with another way to add beauty to your world: Pre-order Harry Style’s self-titled debut solo album on iTunes, available May 12.
Since we all diligently and thoroughly read our ‘This Week in Honors’ emails then you’ll already know the installation for this semester was titled SHIFT. The collection’s purpose, as described by the contributing artists, is to, “test our notions of scale and transparency by investigating the movement of light, movement of substance, and movement itself through space.”
As I walked through, I was dictating to myself all the faux-deep insights I planned to relay to you all. The juxtaposition of calming and unsettling images meant to represent the space at the edge of your comfort zone where growth and learning take place. Serenity is, of course, a virtue, but allow yourself to get too settled into normalcy and so begins a life of apathy and ignorance. Which is, coincidentally, my current life goals.
I prepared a syllogism about how sometimes you have to flip your perspective to fully understand something — obviously a commentary on the highly polarized political climate we’re currently navigating. You know, the idea that you should still go to your racist aunt’s barbeque this summer. To not be so quick to judge Kyle from your dance history class when he tells you Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book wasn’t even that good.
Don’t get me wrong, all of the pieces took way more talent and patience than I possess. There were several very cool pieces, and one I even felt compelled to add to my snap story even though the docent was aggressively lurking. Perhaps the reason I’ve ultimately decided to forgo a review in the usual sense is because art is, in my opinion, a very personal thing. It is not my place to speculate on the intentions of the artist nor predicate the meaning anyone else should gather. I can simply speak to what it evoked from myself. Simply put, it was pretty. I find great merit in adding beauty to this world however you know how, and so if this was a proper review there’d likely be at least three stars involved, probably more.
Unfortunately as the semester wraps up so does SHIFT’s residency at the DOMA. This means I cannot close by suggesting you go experience the installation for yourself. The dual tragedy being that you can no longer go see this interesting collection and I’m left without a tidy concluding remark. So, I guess in conclusion I’ll leave you with another way to add beauty to your world: Pre-order Harry Style’s self-titled debut solo album on iTunes, available May 12.
RSS Feed
