The Arts Presents Heather Ramsdale's Beyond Origins, On View Through March 13
(Delaware and Chester Counties, PA • February 5, 2015)—Visual artist Heather Ramsdale’s Beyond Origin exhibition is on view in Delaware County Community College’s Art Gallery until March 13. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
In Ramsdale’s work, the intrigue of objects and artificial materials that are displayed in homes, offices, or even vehicles, and often speak to the peculiarity of interior spaces and identity. Although the materials and objects she uses are familiar, mundane and every day, they are combined together to bring into question a new synthetic nature, along with a poetic sense of humor. The materials are manipulated to illicit qualities beyond their original purpose or intent. The search for a contemporaneous existence of dichotomies—feminine/masculine, dark/light, static/moving—is often present as the artist attempts to find the balance in opposites.
In Beyond Origin, the importance of form and material is emphasized as Ramsdale carefully constructs objects that represent structural slices of renovation/design materials. The constructed forms are often used as metaphors for questioning or encapsulating time, or are used to make comments regarding the speed of time. Recognizable objects are re-presented in combination with architectural and interior design elements, and seem to bookend decades or eras. This is in an effort to generate a unique psychological response that feels familiar and new. The goal of the artist is to prompt the viewer’s psychic space and bring into question several ideas centered on time, how we relate to it by the way we live, and how to locate ourselves within it.
Ramsdale earned an M.F.A. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She received an undergraduate degree in Studio Art from SUNY Cortland and studied at Goldsmiths College in London, UK. She is a visual artist whose work encompasses the intrigue of personal objects and interior spaces, often re-presenting recognizable things in an effort to generate a response that feels both familiar and new. Ramsdale was nominated for a Terra Foundation for American Art Award and an Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from ISC. Subsequently, she was the recipient of two Pollock-Krasner Foundation fellowships, both for residencies in upstate New York. She has been invited to talk at The College of New Jersey and the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. She currently teaches sculpture at Kutztown University and lives in Philadelphia where her studio is also located.
The College’s Art Gallery is located in Room 2305 in the Academic Building and open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, contact Caitlin Flaherty, Assistant to the Dean for Arts Programming, at 610-359-5266. To learn more about other upcoming arts programming, visit www.dccc.edu/the-arts.
