TERRE HAUTE — “How To Make A Place In The World,” an exhibition of The Visiting Artist/Scholar Program at the University Art Gallery of Indiana State University, explores the process of knowing and documenting place in a series of multidisciplinary art installations grounded in research about specific lands, landscapes and human communities including the Appalachian piedmont region of central Virginia where the artist has lived and worked for more than 20 years.
These works serve as metaphor for larger issues surrounding preservation of human and natural communities; the resulting installations employ sound, video, sculptural objects and handmade books to investigate human commitment to land and community, and the ways that profound knowledge and love of specific places can impact human efforts toward preservation of endangered lands.
These installations track natural phenomena like weather patterns and the passing of seasons, as well as landscapes and their native flora, birds and animals, that have traditionally informed human understanding of natural environments and inspired emotional and spiritual connections with and commitment to out-of-the-way places and communities.
In general terms, the artworks reflect upon the choices that are made as people set down roots — or choose not to — and the meanings and memories imprinted upon familiar landscapes by people as crucial elements in the process of knowing and valuing nature and community, particularly in the transitory and nomadic times in which we live.
Mara Adamitz Scrupe was born in Minneapolis. She lives and works in Philadelphia and on a farm in rural Virginia.
She currently holds the position of associate professor and coordinator of the Multi-disciplinary Arts BFA Program, The University of the Arts, and has exhibited her projects nationally and internationally has completed numerous research fellowships including artist residencies at CAMAC centre d’art in Marnay, France; MoKS Centre for Art and Social Practice, Estonia; Sirius Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland; USF Verftet/Stiftelsen Kulturhuset, Bergen, Norway; Konstepidemin, Goteborg, Sweden; TICKON Tranekaer International Center of Art and Nature, Denmark; Europos Parkas Open-Air Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Artists Work Programme, Dublin, Ireland; The Baltic Sea Residency Network, Konstepidemin, Goteborg, Sweden; and the MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire.
The University Art Gallery is open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday and is at Seventh and Chestnut streets in the Center for Performing and Fine Arts Building.
For more information, call (812) 237-3787, or e-mail Erin.Caldwell@indstate.edu.
