01/23/2024
Assistant Professor of Art, Sena Clara Creston, will have her piece Semilla Beseda on display at the Museum of Sonoma County a part of the exhibition A Question of Balance which runs from January 27 through May 26.
“Impromptu rural shooting pits are an oasis of implied human activity. They are usually as vacant as the surrounding landscape, but the evidence of human presence is clear. Acres of public land are carpeted with thousands of spent shotgun shells. Brightly colored totems of red, blue, green, pink and yellow they look like toys or candy, innocuous and fun. But each one arrives with a secret explosion and an engineered intention of bloodshed. The material matters. We don’t live in a world of nature, we live in a world of stuff, and that stuff doesn’t just go away after it serves its objective. Made of immortal plastic, it lingers as a reminder to what it once was. I spent months foraging for shells, returning with buckets full of colorful treasures. Each one had their own history seasoned by explosion, weather and neglect, but they were all related. They looked like scales or cells or the bark of a tree. They looked like leaves or flowers or crumpled bits of paper. I wove the shells together to form an enclosed enterable biomorphic structure. It looks like a tree or creature. It looks like Candy Land or McDonald’s Play House. It looks like a cave or a cage. It looks like an explosion. It looks like the cycle of life. The Semilla Besada invites the viewer inside, embracing them with its outstretched arms of reassuring beauty while telling a history of violence and destruction. Its te****le branches envelope you, pulling you in for a closer look. The shells are beautiful. They are unique. Tie-dyed by the sun and squashed into abstract sculptures. They do not hide what they are, but showcase their eternal brutal beauty.”
