Profs. Carole Loeffler and Maryann Worrell ’05 Explore Interconnecting Elements

By Farrah Bradley | April 3, 2017

Interconnecting Elements exhibition statement

I just can’t seem to move
I feel like I’m drowning
It feels unreal
How could this have happened?
I can’t get my footing
Being pulled under
Choking
As artists, educators, mothers and women we chose to put all of the thoughts and feelings about the bleak political landscape into this work. We are all connected and cannot be broken down.

We ARE Interconnecting Elements, formed by the interaction and sense of community with the audience through our work.

Interconnecting Elements is a two-person exhibition of sculptural work by Department Chair and Prof. Carole Loeffler and Prof. Maryann Worrell ’05. Profs. Loeffler and Worrell teach Studio Art Foundations together (among other individual responsibilities) and spend moments in between classes and at lunchtime discussing strategies and approaches in teaching and issues and ideas in their own creative research. They have exhibited work together previously at Abington Art Center and Awbury Arboretum. Their latest exhibition of new work, Interconnecting Elements, was displayed at the Boston Street Gallery, in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, in spring 2017.

Loeffler and Worrell were offered the exhibition in October by gallery owner Jeff Harris. Their plans for the exhibition changed after the election in November, when they decided to make work that would help them process and respond to the new political landscape. The components that remained the same from conception to installation were the utilization of visual elements of water and physical elements of earth, such as stone. They created a series of sculptures in ethereal, somber whites and a range of Democratic royal and watery blues.

Their artwork titles give the viewer context to understand the heavy, complex, and emotional meaning behind them. Maelstrom is a thirty-six-inch circular assemblage of laser cut wood pieces painted in a variety of watery blue tones. When viewers stand directly in front of this wall piece, their eyes move in a circular motion, as if caught in a tornadic whirlpool. Sitting duck is a twenty-four-inch wood target enveloped in three shades of white felt with a stylized arrow shot directly in the center—“popping” a Democratic blue balloon. Other titles of work in the exhibition include Flood, Promise, Laden, Bubble Burst, and Diminish. We are… exists as a viewer participation piece with a vintage typewriter and blue paper. The aesthetic of the work on exhibition is sumptuous and inviting, and it takes time for the political content to be revealed and the message to sink in.