Title

Warped Locality

Author

John Patrick SnyderFollow

College

College of Fine Arts

Date of Award

Spring 4-27-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Program

Sculpture

Thesis Advisor

Duane McDiarmid

Faculty Advisor

Tom Bartel

Faculty Advisor

Karla Hackenmiller

Abstract

My work renders what I perceive as the truest depiction of landscape--an amalgamation of inherent wilderness happenings and major human interventions or more simply put a series of actions and marks. Through this blurred combination of contrasting elements, we are left with a space that we have come to call nature. In my wood sculptures and drawings, I seek out processes and materials that intimately interact with both my mind and body to achieve a greater understanding of my current locality.

All the wood sculptures are cut from the same Red Oak tree that naturally fell in a strong storm. This wood was painstakingly taken from the woods and transported to the studio. Within all that pain and time comes knowledge, knowledge of place and material. This wood has been deconstructed from its indigenous state and fabricated to embody the human spirit. These figurative wood objects are both stable and insecure, relying on each other for support without recognition. With a tuft of the artists hair on the top to symbolize the intersection of nature and culture under the appearance of new growth. The smaller wood sculptures are slightly different in form as they are not figurative, and they are wall mounted, but still reconstructions of deconstruction. Inserting my lover’s hair into the active beetle larvae tunnels creating an ongoing relationship between body and nature.

In my drawings I mimic the paradigm of the Anthropocene by drawing mechanical grids (human intervention) overlaid by an abundance of tick marks (wilderness happenings) to build up this action and reaction perspective. With the excessive meditative application of ink marks the paper is torn and altered lowering the preciousness but heightening the fragility. With fibers of the paper torn a different dimension of terrain is developed and two different personifications of landscape are visible simultaneously.

Recommended Citation

Snyder, John Patrick, "Warped Locality" (2020). Art + Design Masters Theses. 4.
https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/art-masters-theses/4