Lauren Clay with SCAD Dean of Academia. Image courtesy of Emme Raus.
One week ago, artists Lauren Clay and Jeffrey Gibson held receptions for their separate exhibitions at SCAD Atlanta as part of the week-long deFINE Art celebration. Clay’s exhibition “Squash and Stretch” is in the Trois Gallery in SCAD’s library while Gibson’s exhibition “one becomes the other” is housed in SCAD’s Gallery 1600.
Clay transformed the gallery space into what looked like the insides of a sliced geode stone. Her custom wallpaper series was broken up into multiple sections and coated to the walls in a continuous pattern. The marbleized paper was hand-crafted by Clay on a smaller scale before being blow up onto large inkjet wallpaper and fixed with a mild adhesive to the gallery walls. Clay’s precise tree ring-like designs give off an oceanic feel as the patterns ripple and curl in seamless waves along the walls.
Lauren Clay’s “Squash and Stretch,” Trois Gallery. Image courtesy of Emme Raus.
Her exhibition also displayed a selection of paper pulp works attached to her custom wall designs and a series of faux wood grain sculptures that pay homage to David Smith’s Cubi artworks.
In fact, back in 2013 when these pieces were unveiled, David Smith’s estate filed a lawsuit against Clay claiming that her sculptures, seven in total, were derivative of Smith’s work and not transformative.
Lauren Clay’s David Smith Cubi inspired sculptures. Images courtesy of Emme Raus.
“They received a press release for a show I was going to have exhibiting this body of work and I think, out of context just seeing that my sculptures are direct replicas of David Smith’s sculptures, they immediately jumped on my case,” Clay said.
“The pieces are references but there was a true conceptual reason why I was doing it,” she continued. “I think they felt like I was infringing on their copyright, but to infringe on someone’s copyright you have to prove that you would somehow affect their market. He sells his works at auctions for millions of dollars and my little sculptures aren’t really going to affect that. But they feared my sculptures would be like chatskis or things that could be sold in gift shops … and they could get licensed and replicated, but I would never do that.”
The miniature block-assembled sculptures certainly are akin to Smith’s infamous Cubi pieces, but Clay’s eye-popping color scheme and carefully stenciled vein-like designs make her work her own.
“The reason why I wanted to reference those sculptures was because those sculptures had this really overt, swirly decorative pattern on them which I always found really obnoxious and annoying. So I purposefully replicated them,” she admitted.
Below in Gallery 1600, Jeffrey Gibson’s first Southeast solo exhibition was filled with students and faculty. Half Cherokee Indian, Gibson utilized fabric, cloth and beads to create a range of decorative pieces embroidered with phrases that imply struggle like “When Push Comes to Shove,” “I’m Gonna Try Just a Little Bit Harder” and “What We Want What We Need.”
Jeffrey Gibson’s “one becomes the other,” Gallery 1600. Image courtesy of Emme Raus.
Gibson does not explore various shades of color; he prefers to stick to simple black-and-white designs and primary colors to express his intent. There were even two pieces renovated out of old punching bags, one dressed up in black-and-white beads and chandelier crystals.
Jeffrey Gibson’s “one becomes the other,” Gallery 1600. Image courtesy of Emme Raus.
An avid reader, Gibson’s influences include prosaic authors like Raymond Carver and James Baldwin. In fact, the title of his exhibition is modified after a line in one of Baldwin’s books, “All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists … are forced, at least, to tell the whole story.”
Jeffrey Gibson’s “one becomes the other,” Gallery 1600. Image courtesy of Emme Raus.
Overall there is a beautiful balance of geometric, minimalist art popular in the 1970s and distinctive Native American art. Lauren Clay’s “Squash and Stretch” is on view in Trois Library through April 20 and Jeffrey Gibson’s “one becomes the other” is on view in Gallery 1600 through May 20.