Lorry Walot took a whole three minutes to create the masterpiece that now hangs in the Stevens Gallery. The piece is a black cotton sheet. It is creaseless, without a speck of white thread or a puff ball.
Walot had laid the sheet on the ground while cleaning out her closet at the beginning of the semester. She was opening the plastic wrap of the brand new pillows she had purchased. After each pillow was opened, she dropped them onto the sheet before moving on to the next one. Two minutes later she removed the pillows from the sheet. Voila –– the first piece for her senior showcase was complete.
“It’s magnificent! It subtlety captures the unseen inspirations that guide us through the world. The fact that the imprint of the pillows is invisible shows the potential for nothingness to actually be the emptiness of a previously existent something. That thought process is just quite marvelous!” remarked Walot’s adviser, Namai Elohtra.
Inspired by her adviser’s positive feedback, Walot expanded her concept to include white sheets and various other plushy objects.
“I actually laid the white sheets down on purpose. But you know I’m the clumsy type, so when I walk around my room, things like my stuffed octopus fall on it. It works out kind of well –– they leave their imprints and I have another piece for my portfolio,” said Walot.
Elohtra noted that not all senior art majors dealt with the depth of process and thought that Walot’s work showcased.
“Some students depict natural and man-made objects in their artwork. It’s just not as intangible and abstract. Things like trees and bowls of fruit are so useful –– they are far too real to be art, even if they are only two-dimensional,” he said. “Art has to be unreal, it must be so beyond your reach that you have to make a leap into space in order to see the unseen from a distance.”
Senior Isu Ckatart disagrees.
“A representation of something real isn’t the same as the real thing,” she said.
Ckatart’s showcase features canvases textured with colorful images. One three-panel painting features a troupe of dancers, skirts and scarves swirling in hues of red and brown.
“This isn’t art. You can just go to a stage show and see the same thing,” said Elohtra.
Ckatart knows her work isn’t taken well, but she continues with her style despite disapproval.
“I want to challenge people to think superficially. When people see pieces that have, like, one dot on a large wall, their minds go into a deep place. The whole universe becomes like some unsolvable mystery or something. I want to tell people to just look and leave. You don’t have to think so hard that your brain hurts.” said Ckatart.
