Emergent

Alice Spencer

March 27 - May 10, 2025
Opening Reception: March 27, 5 - 7pm

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Featured

Alice Spencer

The repeated form in this work is made from a shadow cast on sun sensitive paper and joined to its mirror image. The form, by chance, resembles a butterfly. A totem is a vertical wooden pole with carvings of guardians or ancestral beings, usually supernatural, that are revered and respected.
~ Alice Spencer

ABOUT THE SHOW

My previous work focused on textiles and their social and symbolic significance in traditional societies. The work was improvisational but used a vocabulary of existing motifs.

My goal for the current work was to pull new patterns from primary sources.

To generate ideas for patterns I used natural materials that I found underfoot -- dry grass, twigs and other natural debris. I made prints using handfuls of this material thrown onto light sensitive paper; then I mirror reflected sections of the prints to turn them into bilateral forms. I intended this process to be a first step in creating more complex patterns.

What happened was unexpected: the process conjured imagery that suggested new forms of life.

I discontinued the pattern making process, made the images into stencils and printed them.

This is the body of work that emerged.

— Alice Spencer