Beverly Semmes

Last Tuesday, March 1, 2011, the AAPNYC Seminar class had the opportunity to visit the studio of Beverly Semmes. Below are the pieces written y the AAPNYC students about their experience. You can see more of Beverly Semme's art here:
http://www.beverlysemmesstudio.com/images.html

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The ability to talk with Beverly Semmes and tour her studio lent me an informal look into the life of a professionally successful artist. I found that much of Beverly’s work is emotional, driven by a visceral impulse that does not necessarily come from over-analysis of art criticism. This debate, between interpretation and feeling, has been one that I’ve been struggling with lately. Even reading Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation made me think of some of Beverly’s pieces. Her artwork requires emotional reaction, a sentiment that an installation’s overall atmosphere can bring. The vibrance of her colors, along with the vastness of her fabric landscapes creates a sublimity that cannot simply be ascribed to feminist criticism. I found it especially relevant that she wanted her work to simply affect, to not have simply a feminist reading. I found the dresses, although there is some reference to feminism, to be whimsical and personal. They seemed to be something out of either a children’s book gone wrong or a dream. Yet they became elevated to the status of waves or sand or mountains. I was instantly reminded of Martha Graham’s school of dance, in the way that the body could be come a landscape or an abstract shape. Beverly’s garments have a similar transformative ability.
Another concept that I found interesting in Beverly’s work was her allusion to literary references. I thought her piece Kimberly became especially evocative, simply because she had given a name and thus a personality to the object. Olga and Ophelia had a similar affect. One could instantly recognize the story and literary weight behind the piece, giving the dresses an emotionally significant facet.
Beverly’s connection to sculptors like Louise Bourgeois, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and especially Ann Hamilton stuck with me as well. I instantly recognized the similarities between Ann Hamilton and Beverly because of works such as Petunia and Pink Potatoes. The idea of a color or an ephemeral material leaving a trace is vastly important for both artists. In Petunia, Beverly leaves a trace of the physical presence of fabric on the floor. It is solidly fixed in one instance, and absent in another. In discussing Pink Potatoes, Beverly mentioned that she wanted their painted coating to leave markings upon the ice, much like drawing. Ann Hamilton’s work Myein has a similar affect, not only because it is also pink. The work makes use of colored dust, falling and revealing Braille text upon the wall. The presence of unseen text is revealed, along with traces of dust that are carried with the audience throughout the Biennale pavilions. Both artists’ works make use of this concept of transient materials in their installations. They are concurrently able to strike the balance between creating landscape and atmosphere, but not swinging entirely towards abstraction. In Beverly’s case, what struck me about her incorporation of the body rather than the abstract form was that she could more easily make decisions. Yet she is able to take the “found object” of a dress and transform it into something that does retain abstract qualities, such as landscape, texture, and space within a gallery.

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Its difficult to pin down an artist with such a deep breadth of work like Beverly Semmes, who has been working for over two decades and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Spanning multiple mediums, her work is connected by its attention to detail and expansive nature (even within her smaller works). Within her various objects, whether it is ceramic “pots,” elongated gowns or crystal work, there is a beautiful and delicate nature that is exceptionally intriguing.

One of the disappointments of not being able to actually see any of the works (aside from the few unfinished sculptures in her studio) was that I felt a sense that I was missing out on a beautiful and essential aspect of her work. The materials she uses for her sculptures and linked to the visceral character of her pieces and is perhaps what ties them all together. The reason I believe many have categorized her work as feminist, a term which she rejects, is not only because of the fact that she creates dresses, but because of this visceral element in all her work. Her work exudes a sensuality that is directly tied to her existence as a female sculptor. The carnality of her ceramic work (the material itself is directly linked to nature and earth), with its protruding limbs and human gestures, undoubtedly has a sexual undercurrent that runs through all of her work.

Perhaps it is because of this that I enjoy her ceramic and glasswork more than her dresses and coats, which I find difficult to interact with. While I recognize the beauty in these works (and perhaps it is because I am male), I am unable to connect with these works. To me they read as purely aesthetic entities in which one tends to lose themselves within the stitches of the fabric and not much else. One thing I noted during her presentations is that she often refrained from analyzing her own work and the majority of her presentation dealt with the materials and installations. While she did discuss that others label her work feminist and that she was incensed when Roberta Smith called one of her works menstrual, I wish that she had gone into more depth as to her thought process when making these works and had told us what she hoped the viewer would take away from them. Overall however, it was a great learning experience to catch an artist within their “native” environment, getting a glimpse into her process and at some unfinished works.

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At one point Beverly Semmes spoke about her extravagant use of color as her attempt at trying to make things beautiful, and then later trying to push that beauty. Certainly the enormous dresses are captivating as they invade floor space with lush color, but are these dresses really full of feminine connotations? The artist herself never thought so. For her the genesis seemed to come from a new way of using the figure in nature, which created a basic urge to create clothing devoid of any political consciousness. In one of her later exhibitions she positioned four dresses on the wall (not quite the overflowing largess’s of previous years) against a cluster of her glass sculptures on pedestals in the center of the room. Perhaps it is the sculptures lack of color that attracts me to them in the context of her work, but I feel that this face off (between the glass sculptures and slightly scaled down dresses) is the realization of Semmes comment about pushing “that beauty.” The two sets of objects posed against one another ask the viewer what are the qualities that make something beautiful? Color, fabric, material, craftsmanship are all players in this debate. But still the work offers little room for feminist interpretation. Her very latest work however, involving the bitch character and the super puritan, I feel is the most directed towards a feminist sensibility or even critique. The opposing nature of the bitch and super puritan’s relationship seems to highlight the major problem with labeling oneself a feminist (or any other generalized term). That problem being the fact that no one is ever wholly and absolutely aligned with such a particularly loaded term, and that these terms often end up polarizing rather than unifying. In any case it was an incredibly unique experience to be able to speak with such an established artist in such an informal, relaxed setting. Ms. Semmes seemed to be making work from a place of intuition rather than overwrought theory and philosophy and that was a refreshing thing to see.

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Beverly Semmes, like her artwork, is captivating as an artist and lecturer. The alluring quality of her speech as she shifts fluidly from one piece to another is reminiscent of the type of artist I thought was now obsolete—dreamy, elusive. The free flowing rhythm of her explanations added a further layer of mystery and poignancy to her work. I was impressed by the absence of overtly academic terminologies in her descriptions, like when she discussed her place as an artist in terms of feminism and how her work does not attempt to force entry into any specific realm. It was refreshing to hear an artist speak about her art as actual organisms, removed from any sociopolitical agenda, especially when she talked about how she realized the political implications her large-scale dresses only after she produced them. It seemed more important to her to remain entrenched in the process until completion, rather than force the inevitable completion to move or guide her process. This technique is definitely evident in her pieces once they were finished. Her ceramics and her dresses are all somehow methodically whimsical, an oxymoronic effect that makes sense considering her process of working.
Although I was intrigued by how she manipulated and transformed the known form of the dress into something more surreal and less recognizable, I found myself most drawn to the landscapes she seemed to have created from the actual fabric once the material made contact with the ground. The ocean of fabric that fell from the dresses was exquisite and worked well in duality with the altered interpretation of the once recognizable dress form. The pieces seemed to reference Karla Black’s work, though Semmes is more experimental with bold colors. One of my favorite pieces that she spoke about was “Petunia,” an installation she set up in Holland in which she included the participation of the museum guard. This piece, too, had that same methodically whimsical air about it, especially when she discussed the effect of the guard’s presence in the piece. It seemed that one of the most important parts to the piece that made it so successful was realized only after she saw the absolute completion of the work. It was exciting to hear her speak about how much she enjoyed the joining and separating of the guard from the ocean of magenta fabric every time she removed herself from her seat in the center of the piece and walked about the atrium to do her job. I am not sure how to describe this discovery as anything else but methodically whimsical. It is obvious that Beverly is very aware of the direction of her pieces as she works through them, but I sense that some aspects must be somewhat of a serendipitous occurrence.
Listening to and speaking with Beverly was an incredibly encouraging experience. She seemed completely self-aware without being self-conscious, a careful balance that I think is essential to moving forward as an art student and artist.

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It is not so seldom that our teachers tell us to “figure out what kind of art we want to make” or “get ready to have a real concrete theme for your senior thesis.” And these statements are terrifying. I teeter back and forth on how I feel about claims like these: do I need to figure out what I want to say and how before it’s too late? Or can I meander through the world of visual arts forever, simply letting my interests inform my work?
Beverly Semmes scared me out of my wits. Her work, spanning thirty years of production, seems to tiptoe around almost identical forms and concepts. How many giant dresses can one woman make? And when those get old, how many pots or pillows can she match them with? How many years will it take for her to shift media? And all the while, I’m asking, who cares? She is successful and her work is interesting, end paragraph.
By means of horrific exaggeration, what I am getting at is that Beverly’s work all rotates around the same central concepts: feminine crafts, bright colors, silence. She has marked her success by refusing (or rather, never wishing) to move away. And this has yielded her huge amounts of success. Terrifying news for a young, confused, indecisive art student.
Even more terrifying is her nonchalance about these concepts. “I just started sewing these dresses because something about realistic forms seemed right,” or, “I enrolled in a ceramics class at the Y…and I just pile the clay up and maybe it looks like a utilitarian object to some people…” While we are taught daily to back up our ideas with prolific writing and historical referencing, Beverly just makes stuff. Then, marked by a passion for this production, and a huge breadth of it, the critics imbue it with all sorts of value—value that perhaps was never really intended (eg. Feminist critiques). She speaks quite clearly about her work, her intentions, her involvement with certain forms or materials. Then she lets the work, itself take over. Quite impressive, really.
On another note, I found some of her external interests quite poignant and interesting. Her pottery has clear connections to the work of Louise Bourgeois, while her installations have very interesting relationships to those at PS 1 by Ursala Von Rydingsvard. Thinking about these relationships undoubtedly makes her work more interesting for me, brings it to a new level and engages it in some conversations that may not have been apparent without that mention. Therefore, in her presentation, I would have loved for Beverly to take a firm position on her work as part of a larger art historical discourse, and present it as such.

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The studio visit last week gave us insight into the life and work of Beverly Semmes, whose studio space is situated in the Brooklyn Navy Yards. The work was shown first without any commentary from the artist; it was left open to the interpretation of the viewers. After the work was shown, she then explained her interpretations of and motivations behind her work. This was interesting because such an action establishes a dual interpretation of one work from two perspectives; one being from the viewer, the other being from the artist. For example, one of her pieces involved a video in which she kicks around objects on a snow surface. She films this looking down at her feet; the viewer sees that she has clothing that matches the object being kicked. When I first saw this particular video, my first impression of the meaning of the work was the artist wanted to establish a strong relationship between object and person. I thought that she wanted to convey an idea of an otherwise static object becoming dynamic in a way that responds to the human body. When she finally explained her intents and interests, it was revealed that she was actually interested in the sound that the object created rather than the object itself. She also conveyed an interest in the footprint that the objects left behind. This footprint wasn’t something that she was looking to create, however. It was an interesting observation that she came across after producing the work.

I was also very interested in her sculptural work. While her sculptural works had a very interesting architectural quality, I was also interested in the structural qualities of the piece from an architectural standpoint. One particular piece was composed of heavy solid pieces on top and more linear thin elements on the bottom. I was curious as to how such a piece could stand. She clearly thought of materiality and the actual composition of an object that appears to be solid on the outside. The top pieces that appeared solid on the outside were made hollow on the inside so that they could sit on the thinner members of the bottom of the piece. I found her architectural approach to a sculptural piece very innovative and unique to that particular work.
I also discovered that she is very interested in light quality and its effect on the work that she produces. Again, from an architectural standpoint, I found that aspect of her work very interesting; not only is she thinking of the work itself, but also the role that surroundings play on the perception of the work. The fact that she wants to control lighting shows how much she values the way her work is portrayed and perceived. As an architect, the smallest control over surrounding lighting conditions could make the greatest difference in how a space is perceived. The slightest change in the way light is distributed throughout a space could make it all the more desirable to inhabit. These are things an architect must think about so that a space can reach its fullest potential beyond its physical qualities. In a way, Beverly Sims used lighting to her advantage so that her work could reach its fullest potential.

While she may have not intended to do so, her work takes on several qualities that are found in works of architecture that are conceptually and visually compelling. I was personally amazed at how much I could relate to her work because of these qualities. I was impressed prior to considering the works’ architectural implications, but such implications allowed for a deeper engagement into the work. I find work such as hers to be more successful than others because it draws elements from worlds outside of art.

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Venturing into the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the dark was a rather entertaining experience. After getting by the guards who told me to “Go down and take a right,” I eventually ran into building 21. Inside I was introduced to the work of Beverly Semmes. Running through a slideshow of images, she was not verbally explicit with her concept but rather explained the sequence and manner that she has arrived at her current projects. Her reflections of the changing art world were also informative as she reminded of the rejection of ceramics as a craft external to fine art when she was originally thinking of her ideas, and how today they exist in a completely different environment.

Being an art student, one thing that struck me was how Beverly Semmes has stuck to similar projects throughout her career, while continuing to explore, expand, and change them. Throughout the years she has continued to have a feminist undertone, while engaging architectural aspects of gallery spaces with large works that pronounce themselves to the viewer. Although she continues to produce completely new work such as the censored found images currently hanging on her walls, she has also steadily updated and adjusted her older works, giving them new life, and letting them engage the viewer in new ways. With her large dresses, she has done this through color, as well as animating them by moving them within the gallery space by motor. She has also developed her ceramics and other work to be added into and presented with these dresses.

Being able to enter and see Beverly’s process within her studio was also very informing. It revealed a lot about how she works, taking her ideas and experimenting off of them. This studio was certainly not in a state of disarray, with neatly stacked ceramic pieces, and well lit works on the walls and on pedestals, one could see how the artist takes her ideas, creates small pieces, and then assembles them into completed works. Seeing the assemblage of her clay sculptures, small pots and forms simply assembled together one on top of the other was fascinating as her rather simple process creates profoundly interesting and odd shapes and forms.

I was most interested in Semmes new works of censorship on enlarged magazine images. Although I have done a similar project on magazine covers in a much smaller scale with non pornographic imagery, Semmes’s position as an established woman artist whose work applies to feminist ideas excites me much more than my own work did. It also seems to be working in a very different manner than the dresses, while continuing with a discussion of women within society, it replaces the rather traditional dress and replaces it with a much more contemporary looking altered image printed digitally. Seeing just the clay sculptures and these new images together in the studio, makes me curious to see if Beverly do an installation similar to that of the dresses but replacing the formal dress with the digital print.

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Beverly Semmes’ anecdote about her first Roberta Smith review set the tone for the rest of her presentation. Expressing her horror and concern that her very first New York Times review contained the discussion of menstruation and feminism simultaneously made her endearing while urging me to reevaluate her work. Earthenware vessels and larger than life gowns made of lush fabrics immediately conjure themes of feminism, but Semmes claims that this was not her original objective. Semmes work, and discussion of her work, belies interpretation. Ever elusive with the source of her intent, Semmes shies away from interpretation. This leaves her work open-ended, allowing it to be freely interpreted by the viewer.

In my opinion, Semmes work is strongly feminist despite her claims that her work was not made with such ideas in mind. Her newer work most certainly illustrates the interplay between feminist and modern woman. Dealing with pornography, the images handles the autonomy of the models in a peculiar manner. Semmes admits to wanting to cover the vulgar parts of the pictures out of her “puritan” side but also reveals her inner “bitch” by working from pornography. Using such images as her medium Semmes is taking part in a hotly debated feminist argument. Pornography can be seen as both exploitative and empowering and the line Semmes draws between the two is quite unclear. Despite her puritanical efforts to conceal the crudeness, there are ghosts of the women in the image that suggest the removal of their agency.

Semmes works seem to exist purely in a state of flux. Her creations are neither here nor there and embrace their ephemeral quality. It is in this state that the viewer becomes a part of the work. The gowns, for example, beckon the viewer to take part in their existence from their monumental size and inviting, opulent pools of fabric. Inhabiting the spaces left empty by Semmes, the viewer is able to engage in a dialogue with the artist.

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Our visit with Beverly was a really good combination of a studio visit and a presentation. I really enjoyed having Beverly giving us a chance to silently experience her work, understand her background, and be acquainted with present work, before we saw the actual pieces in the studio. I think without context, our background I would not have appreciated her growth to the pots, and her passion for them. These pots have been something that she has finally resulted with, after having them “snuck” (her words) into exhibitions her entire career. To see them delicately places in her studio on pedestals made them little worshiped objects and made the visit more sentimental. Her love of them made me love them. I was not seeing art objects, I was looking at her finally being able to recognize her dreams after years of being attached to cloth dresses.
I felt like the dresses were a stereotype or iconic style of her work from so early on she was constrained by them. The pots on the other hand were her. Her sitting placed on top these dresses, complimentary in color and looking awkwardly paired, or even, as she told us, in the gallery battling the dresses for attention. She had the dresses folded in an old gym bag in the corner, and handled them carelessly. She seemed more amused by the silly dog pattern than emotionally invested in it. It was as if, after all this time, the dresses had lost meaning, attachment, sentiments of any kind. It was sad to me. I completely understand from an artist’s view how old work is treated; sometimes it loses its magic, other times it’s just as magnificent each time it’s pulled out. These dresses, however, were completely new, about to be shown for the first time, and she looked at them like a relic idea she was pulling out to hold together her beloved pots.
That said, I personally found each one individually stunning and think they were a huge success in her work. They did not need fashion influences, or a certain time period historical significance, they were simply dresses. The iconic shape was reduced to its simplest form. I really appreciated her simplicity in art and her strong desire not to constrain or cloud anyone’s reading of her work by talking too much about them. Her ‘art is art’ philosophy is something I really admire and wish was more prevalent in the art world we are experiencing here in New York. The dresses were able to be dramatic, and bland simultaneously, they held landscapes and texture, light and color. It was what is valued in art brought to an object. I really agree with her that there was so much more to them than a “feminist” reading. It reiterated my feelings that art should not be forced into context or concept. Art should be timeless and free. Like Beverly’s pots.

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Beverly Semmes’ fully considered pieces seem to feed off of one another, relating beautifully to each other and whatever space they are adapted to. It is so refreshing to see how fluidly and seemingly effortlessly the conceptual and formal relations between the works operate and enhance one another. The extremely different mediums, fabrics, glass, ceramic, drawings, scans or prints, are able to live cohesively as they all breath the same sort of essence, this can only happen when an artist is genuinely invested in and fully understands the concepts and ideas he or she is working with. In her pieces, equal attention is paid to the ideas of utility, the body, surface, touch, color, space, and material, no matter what medium. This can be seen in her latest work, still under construction in her studio. Giant digital prints of edited penthouse images help to inform the totem like ceramic structures witch they confront spatially. The flattened blocked out forms draw in into abstract shapes linger in-between having function (to block out) and being aesthetic abstractions. Likewise, the sculptural pieces imply function (covered in handles), but live more as form. The tremendously physical mark making of the drawings reveal a type of frantic commitment to editing and concealing. Seen in relation to the extremely handled surface of the ceramic works the prints inform the handling and make it more aggressive.

However what I find most interesting about all these new works is how they pulse between, as she puts it, “the bitch” and the “super puritan”. While she seemed to polarize the two I think they are much more cohesive. Even in the separated costumes this can be found. The Super Puritan though covered is labeled with two scarlet letters; the self conscious mark which shows that perhaps the prude is not glorified in her mind. Similarly, the bitch attire is made out of a dog-patterned print. While it is a nice play on words, the kind and kitsch faces of small dogs on a very modest full length dress is less than hostile. This same duality of character lives within all of her new work, especially her prints. Her edited pent house images both reveal a voyeuristic desire to examine these taboo pictures, as well as hide them. What’s more is that end products often lend the women or what’s left of them a sort of power. Creating new interest and compelling audiences want to re-examine and stay with the images even longer. By blotting out everything but two piercing eyes in a sea of green marker, the attain a new stare which lingers between helplessness and seduction, between the pure and the bitch.

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Beverly Semmes is a very strong compelling artist. I felt privileged to hear about her process and for her to share her body of work with our class. I appreciate the way in which Beverly Semmes produces her work. She does figure out every detail or how her work will turn out. I think that is a quality that is often ignored today in school. I have not taken many art classes but especially in architecture there is a set idea of how a project will finish. Beverly’s method pays more attention to the creation and process of working. I think that her method is a much more conscious method of choices and open to the evolution of work. There is a very strong connection between all of her work over the years that does not need to be explained, but is simply understood as a result of her process.
I value work that can be interpreted and appreciated without requiring an explanation. I also enjoy that Beverly is open to circumstances, especially with the security guard as the model. She was open to the idea of the person sitting and walking around and how that would change the piece. She had no idea what would actually happen or how it would be perceived. Beverly has played with a live person in many show and she learns for each project as and evolving process.
I found the introduction of ceramics intriguing in her work. The clay pots sitting on the dresses just seem to work. They do not need to be explained. The texture of the pot and the texture of the dress have a strong relationship. Her most recent posters even portray this connection but on a 2d surface. The childlike scribbles o the posters were very closely relation to the texture of the dresses and the ceramic pots.
In architecture we constantly document every step of work and photograph ever object that we create. Beverly has an interesting take on this. The photographs she took seem to be more sentimental to capture a memory than and an actual documentation of the work. I wouldn’t say that she ignores documentation, but this also contributes to the idea of not knowing what will happen with an idea. I have been trained to take a photograph of every step, but I think that is hinders my creativity and ability to just let go of a project. Perhaps this is why her work is so compelling and successful.

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Our studio visit with Beverly Semmes gave us a comprehensive overview of her work, but in a very satisfying way, left certain aspects of her work unanalyzed and un-interpreted. This is one of the things I liked best about the artist, and her massive, unwieldy dresses and ceramics – that there was no need to rationalize every single decision about her methods or her display. Semmes is an artist who works instinctually, even to the point where she is not necessarily aware of all the readings and connotations of her own work. While I do not necessarily think that this lack of awareness is a strength in an artist’s work, it was refreshing to hear someone speak to the different kinds of interpretation that can come unconsciously, or after the work has been made.
While we were looking at her work, I wondered about the importance of functionlessness as it relates to Semmes’ objects. It seems inevitable that Semmes’ ridiculously large, awkwardly put-together dresses and whimsical pots that physically would not be able to hold any sort of liquids or small objects must relate to the object, and an object’s relationship to function and utilitarianism. Both clothing and ceramic pots are items that are born of necessity – the necessity to clothe oneself, and for protection from the elements; the necessity to store vital substances, such as water, or food, or to carry any of these things over distances. Over time both these items have become artful, commodified, and beautiful for the sake of beauty. In many instances clothing and ceramics have become art objects, whether in the fashion world, where clothing becomes a symbol of cultural savvy, money, or taste – or in the sphere of display in the home, where ceramic pots serve the double function of fundamentally decorative and status symbol. Clothing is still necessary to keep us warm. Ceramics have become almost completely nullified as necessary objects for storage. Tupperware is a far cheaper alternative to glazed pots or other crafted containers – the decision to use ceramics in the home is a purely aesthetic choice.
Semmes’ works take the un-‘useful’ nature of both clothing and ceramics and literally blows them completely out of proportion. Her dresses have arms of uneven lengths, or arms that join together to form a circle of rich fabric, or are made to fit lopsided giants. Her pots climb impossibly upwards, with myriad handles and orifices that could certainly not withstand water damage. Having rendered both of these items completely and utterly functionless beyond the realm of ‘contemporary functionlessness,’ Semmes is free to use both objects outside of their original contexts and create lushly beautiful landscapes of floating, transparent silk in vivid colors, marked by pots as totemic monuments. Both objects have an undeniable relationship to the body in their original conception (as objects) as well as the scale at which Semmes creates and displays them.

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Although I was unable to see her work in person, after research, I find Beverly Semmes' pieces incredibly compelling. I can only imagine the scale in real life, but even in the pictures, one can sense the impact and consuming effect each of her clothing pieces have. Her statement of the injustice of gender role stereotyping is clearly shown by taking feminine clothes, and thus the role of the female, out of context and pushing the viewers to question their purpose and identity. A dress becomes not a universal symbol of the female, as on a bathroom sign, but a texture and material creating a sort of painting much like Sergej Jensen's. But, unlike Jensen, Semmes' work lives on not only the walls but on the floors, clearly defining different spaces, highlighting some areas, leaving others as background. These intrusions on the floor suddenly make her pieces more interactive, putting it on the same plane as the viewer, and her folds that ruffle over smooth concrete surface invoke an idea, a different imagination of the existing space; waves of an ocean or a rug. The textiles she chooses to work with bring vibrancy to her minimalistic designs for each clothing piece, emphasizing the symbol of the clothes. Also her photographs are striking, especially 'buried treasure' and 'petunia'. The first playing with the familiar idea of a treasure hunt with an x marking the destination, somehow reminds me of the forgotten importance of people sometimes, and that humans are "behind" everything; society, progress, civilization, etc. The latter places a bountiful field of fuchsia flowers inside of a stark church, an image that I will remember, although not knowing why yet.
The other works by Semmes that I enjoyed were her glass pieces, like 'shot # 10, dancing james'. The glass work seems to be mobile, never in a stable shape. Similar to her clothes, these works of glass seem to un-shape the conventional form of certain objects, like a pot or a vase, giving them not only a whimsical aesthetic but also a new definition for the names of these objects. But unlike her works that occupy a wall or floor these glass pieces are not so much singular objects as objects within a larger whole. They are linked to one another becoming a larger entity, through their organic boundaries and transparency of material. Semmes is an artist with work that I understand and find extremely pleasant visually and aesthetically. I am glad to have a chance to get to know her work, and hope to be able to see similar inspiration in the future, whether it is her or another artist.

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Beverly Semmes was a generous and honest speaker and host. She was completely candid about her process, patient with the questions we asked, and very respectful of the opinions we expressed. Her work was very interesting to look at, and it was a privilege to see some of it in person before it is even displayed in a gallery. Her entire body of work has so much to offer us as viewers—they contain so many rich textures and vibrant hues that it seems like one could get lost in front of any of them for hours (I wouldn’t know for sure because I’ve never seen it in person). And for all of the work’s formal intricacy and originality, it has a kind of accessibility that is somewhat rare in contemporary art.

Though the work is certainly conceptually complex, it carries with it a set of material concerns and considerations that are wholly comprehensible even to the most unseasoned gallery visitor. By addressing two of the most basic concerns in art (visual and haptic stimulation) with ultra-familiar materials (fabric, clay, and glass) and a strikingly contemporary palette (which draws cues from commercial signage, product design, and advertising), Semmes creates a hybrid brand of works that can entrance any viewer. Her work seems to me the perfect marriage of worlds—of hands-on creation with cool, industrial production: fingerprinted pots coated with matte fluorescent orange, simple, rustic dresses at an unbelievable scale composed of the most outrageous patterns, austere crystal dripping and swirling about, forming living spindles to invade the space around it.

What was best about visiting Ms. Semmes’s studio, aside from getting to see her work in progress, was the completely honest talk she gave us. We were very lucky to have a speaker open up so much for us. As students, we need as much insight into the processes of working artists as we can get, and Ms. Semmes gave us everything she could. From inception to realization, we were given a clear and honest sense of what it took to create those works. When a work came from an unlikely stroke of inspiration, such as the Pink Potatoes piece, she was quick to let us in on its origins, however mundane they might be. She seemed to take a healthy fascination with the ordinary, to question the most basic norms.

All of Semmes’s work seems to ask, “Why utility?” Why should a dress or a pot or a chandelier or a vase have any function at all? On one level, her work is very much eye candy; it fills up a visual field very nicely with all sorts of vibrant colors and lush textures. It contributes to the discourse on formalism (which, according to Wikipedia, is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form), which pretty much gives it enough critical/theoretical clout to be acceptably complex—in other words, you can talk about it in terms of ontology and Platonic essentialism, and the latter’s manifestation in the forms related to Greek pottery. The dresses, too, can be seen in the same formalist (not feminist) light if you’re clever about it, positioning them as some kind of Platonic women’s attire.

That read, at least, seems more plausible than the oversimplified feminist one, which takes the stance that any dress in a gallery (save one painted by an old master) amounts to a feminist work.

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Beverly Semmes flowing, ethereal dresses and sturdy, thumb-printed pots at first seemed to me to have nothing in common, but as she spoke about her process and evolution as an artist, I began to appreciate the interaction between them. Though the breadth and amount of her work was quite overwhelming, I was amazed by the same-ness (or similarity) of it all; though she has been working as a professional artist since graduate school, approximately 20 to 30 years of work later, her interests, style, and creative integrity and goals have not wavered. Furthermore, her explication of the work was fluid, but fixed: her intentions have not changed, but she is open to the possibility of discussion about and interpretation of her work (for example, when the interpretation of a feminist discourse was brought up, Semmes admitted that although she hadn’t had that specific intention while creating the work, she could understand that reading of it). It was refreshing to hear an artist speak with such conviction about their work while still remaining open-minded and not concrete about its position.
While the craft element of Semmes’ work evident in her pottery and ceramic making is evident, I found I preferred her work in fabric, particularly the oversized dresses. I wish we could have seen them actually hung in a space; I imagined the conversation between the dreamy, ephemeral organza and chiffon and the thick, bottomless crushed velvet, and then imagined that conversation five times larger than life-size and hung on a gallery wall above me. Petunia is a personal favorite. Simply the amount of fabric (and amount of the color pink) was at the same time overwhelming and pleasing to the eye. In these large-scale pieces and installation work, I found the mass of fabric began to look like a moving body of water, with its rippled texture.
Another group of pieces which were especially eye-catching (besides the obvious neon) were the large dresses with the mile-long sleeves, which Semmes twisted into shapes and designs as they ran along the floor. The piece Alphabet Dresses also played with this idea of body or clothing extension, but seemed to push the notion even further. Besides elongated or mismatched sleeves, other aspects of the clothing were slightly off-kilter: a gaping O in the middle of a shirt, tattered trails rather than a hemmed edge, tiny or enormous neck and head holes. Though I might be reading too much into the work, this appeared to be an interesting study of body extension, mutilation, or separation through the clothing.