Deep Waters, Thin Places
By Erin Fussell
March 3-31, 2017
Opening, First Friday, March 3, 6-9pm
Artist Talk, Thursday, March 23, 6-7pm
In this immersive installation of video, performance, sound, lithography, and sculpture, Erin Fussell transforms an urban desert flood control dam into a creative site. Fussell looks at the space conceptually as a reflection of a possible internal state of being. Culturally, we build “flood control systems” within ourselves as well to live in the world. The artist’s work poses an important question, when should we control it and when should we let it flood? In one video, performers interpret visual scores inspired by engineering plans of Embudo Dam on the dam in the Sandia Foothills. Water rushes uncontrolled in another. Wooden sculptures that mimic elements of the concrete dam structure recall the materiality of the site versus the gallery, point to the relationship between the natural and build environment. The work affords the viewer the ability to reinterpret everyday landscape and experience space, both internally and externally.
Sanitary Tortilla Factory, 401 2nd St. SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
Gallery Hours: Thursdays and Fridays 12-5pm, or by appointment
Ph. 505-228-3749
About the artist: Erin Fussell is an interdisciplinary artist working in New Mexico. After growing up in watery Portland, Oregon and traveling extensively, Fussell draws inspiration from the desert landscape. She is currently the John Gaw Meem Architecture and Design Fellow at the Center for Southwest Research and an alumni SITE Santa Fe Scholar. “Deep Waters, Thin Places” is her MFA thesis show for the Art and Ecology program at the University of New Mexico and part of Albuquerque’s Women in Creativity 2017.