Janet Orselli

Works of Art: Janet Orselli

2008-12-01T17:42:00.031-05:00

All works of art by Janet Orselli are available at if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln Street, Columbia, SC.
PREVIEW of JANET ORSELLI: The New York Exhibition

For ARTIST STATEMENTS related to this exhibition, CLICK HERE.

Janet Orselli, Impedimenta, which will be on view at
Orselli's if ART Gallery
exhibition in January 2011, $850 each.
FOR IMAGES OF INDIVIDUAL IMPEDIMENTA PIECES,
CLICK HERE.

View of On a Roll (hanging on the wall), Ball and Chain, Sink or Spin, and Rootbound

Ungrounded, 2008
found object construction
12 x 17.5 x 11 in., $850.

Turtle Racer, 2007
found object construction
6 x 8 x 6 in., $850.

Move, 2009
found object construction
11 x 10 x 8 in., $850.

Foottrap, 2008
found object construction
10.5 x 9.5 x 3 in., $850.

Copter, 2007
found object construction
7.5 x 16 x 3 in., $850.

Heavy Load, 2008
found object construction
6 x 15 x 6 in., $850.

Free Wheel, 2008
found object construction
6 x 18 x 2.5 in., $850.

Weighing In, 2010
found object construction
9 x 10 x 3 in., $850.

Ball and Chain, 2008
found object construction
6 x 13 x 4.5 in., $850.

Be Careful, 2007
found object construction
4.5 x 9 x 3 in., $850.

Cutting Edge, 2007
found object construction
5 x 13 x 4 in., $850.

Guilt, 2007
found object construction
3 x 11 x 3 in., $850.

Fiddler, 2008
found object construction
13 x 3 x 5 in. $850.

Hammerhead, 2009
found object construction
9 x 7.5 x 4 in., $850.

Floater, 2008
found object construction
6 x 11 x 3 in., $850.

Question Feet, 2008
found object contruction
13 x 10 x 8 in., $850.

Rootbound, 2008
found object construction
5.5 x 13 x 4 in., $850.

Sink or Spin, 2008
found object construction
6 x 10 x 5 in., $850.

All works of art by Janet Orselli are available at if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln Street, Columbia, SC.

Contact Wim Roefs at if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com or (803) 255-0068/(803) 238-2351.

Janet Orselli: ETV Video

2008-11-30T11:40:00.000-05:00

Click here to watch ETV video of Janet Orselli showing and talking about her installations.

if ARTwalk: Salon I & II: December 11- 24, 2008

2008-11-29T16:05:00.000-05:00

For exhibition installation images, click here.

THE SALON I & II

Dec. 11 – 24, 2008

an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations:

Gallery 80808/Vista Studios

808 Lady Street

if ART Gallery

1223 Lincoln Street

Reception and ifART Walk: Thursday, Dec. 11, 5 – 10 p.m.

at and between both locations

Opening Hours:

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Saturday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sunday, 1 – 5 p.m.

& by appointment

Open Christmas Eve until 7 p.m.

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:

(803) 255-0068/ (803) 238-2351 – if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com

For its December 2008 exhibition, if ART Gallery presents The Salon I & II, an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations: if ART Gallery and Gallery 80808/Vista Studios. On Thursday, December 11, 2008, 5 – 10 p.m., if ART will hold opening receptions at both locations. The ifART Walk will be on Lady and Lincoln Streets, between both locations, which are around the corner from each other.

The exhibitions will present art by if ART Gallery artists, installed salon-style at both Gallery 80808 and if ART. Artists in the exhibitions include two new additions to if ART Gallery, Columbia ceramic artist Renee Rouillier and the prominent African-American collage and mixed-media artist Sam Middleton, an 81-year-old expatriate who has lived in the Netherlands since the early 1960s.

Other artists in the exhibition include Karel Appel, Aaron Baldwin, Jeri Burdick, Carl Blair, Lynn Chadwick, Steven Chapp, Stephen Chesley, Corneille, Jeff Donovan, Jacques Doucet, Phil Garrett, Herbert Gentry, Tonya Gregg, Jerry Harris, Bill Jackson, Sjaak Korsten, Peter Lenzo, Sam Middleton, Eric Miller, Dorothy Netherland, Marcelo Novo, Matt Overend, Anna Redwine, Paul Reed, Edward Rice, Silvia Rudolf, Kees Salentijn, Laura Spong, Tom Stanley, Christine Tedesco, Brown Thornton, Leo Twiggs, Bram van Velde, Katie Walker, Mike Williams, David Yaghjian, Paul Yanko and Don Zurlo.

Biography: Janet Orselli

2008-09-10T17:41:00.003-04:00

High Chair, 2004

Mixed media

68 x 17 x 49 in.

$ 1,200

Janet Orselli (b. 1954)

Janet Orselli was born in Columbia, S.C., and lives in Mill Spring, N.C. In 1976, she graduated from Clemson University with a degree in psychology. She earned an M.F.A. from Clemson in 2001 and was selected for the 2001 and 2004 South Carolina Triennials. Earlier this year, Orselli had a solo show at O.K. Harris Gallery in New York City. Orselli has done large installations at the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, S.C., the Burroughs & Chapin Museum in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., and the Robert Mills Historic Home in Columbia. She has received several residencies and fellowships, including at Anderson Ranch in Colorado and in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship.

Essay: Janet Orselli

2008-09-09T17:39:00.003-04:00

Vanity, 2003

Mixed media assemblage

20 x 14 x 21 in.

$ 600

J a n e t O r s e l l i

by Wim Roefs

By the looks of things, Janet Orselli’s objects have a connection with Dada, Surrealism, and Magic Realism. Many a Surrealist or Magic Realist would have been happy to conceive, as Orselli has, a chair with chestnuts or an animal jaw for a seat or a wisteria vine or crutch for a back. Her use of found objects would have pleased Dada artists, including Marcel Duchamp. And one could imagine Orselli incorporating into her work a “dada,” which is French for “hobby-horse.”

But looks can deceive. While these early 20th century movements blazed a trail for Orselli – as they did for Conceptual, Pop, Junk or many other kinds of contemporary art – her intent has little to do with theirs. Her work at times shares some of Dada’s irony and skepticism of society’s values. But it does not share the cynicism, even nihilism, with which especially European Dada artists reacted to the horrors of World War I. Nor does Orselli indulge in the nonsensical, as Dadaists did.

Like Magic Realist painters, Orselli adds mystery to ordinary objects by juxtaposing them. She is not, however, as interested as they are in the fantastic and unreal but rather in increased awareness of the real. Orselli does not have Surrealism’s anti-rational, bizarre bent, either, nor does she share its automatist techniques. Although intuition is no doubt important in her process, deliberation is probably more important.

Orselli’s work speaks about nature and fragile existence, life and death, decay and rebirth, and the presence of the past both in memory and physical form. She wants to de-objectify the object, especially the common object. She wants to trigger awareness that no object is just an object but that each – whether it’s a drawer, a suitcase, a nest, a bedspring, or a key -- has a history as a living organism or one connected to living beings. She does so by placing aged, weathered, often discarded but still recognizable objects in an unusual context – a context typically provided by other such objects.

Orselli’s method adds drama and mystery to objects easily overlooked in their normal context and, in any case, makes them more of note. Her approach works beautifully for installations, her usual art form. It works as well, though, when the more involved, assembled objects that inhabit her installations are presented as individual sculptures. Taken out of the installation setting, these objects inevitably get a closer look, a look that reveals the consistency and effectiveness of Orselli’s concept and its execution, regardless of scale.

Orselli has no desire to fabricate new objects as a sculptor often would. Rather, she says, she wants to acknowledge the significance of an existing object’s past while at the same time create for it a new purpose. “I am drawn to the external evidence of an object’s past life and the unknown experiences that have changed and individualized it. Primarily I want to focus attention on the objects themselves in their direct, honest state along with the poetic connections I make between objects.”

Essay: Janet Orselli

2008-09-08T18:03:00.002-04:00

JANET ORSELLI

Construction Crew III Exhibition

by Wim Roefs

2007

Janet Orselli uses common, aged, often found materials for her uncommon installations and objects. While Orselli’s work is not an easy celebration of all things old, her materials do provide an appealing entry point into works of art that are actually statements about contemporary culture. Coming from her region, the U.S. South, the materials come with a built-in sense of place and a connection to regional culture and history. Their familiar quality and sense of times past might encourage viewers to explore the work’s implications, which reach well beyond regional concerns.

“I like saving things,” Orselli says, “especially saving things from certain destruction. I rescue old things that speak loudly to me from trash piles and flea markets. I bring them home and watch how they communicate with other old things in my studio. Sometimes they scream at each other, sometimes they laugh at each other. But ultimately, in some definitive, yet inexplicable way, certain of these particular old things request to be joined together. So I grant their request. Then I laugh and scream at them.”

Gyn Carriage might be for the screaming section. It’s part of a 2006 series of converted and accessorized old baby carriage frames and conveys, graphically, anxieties of the gynecologic sort. Stuck in the carriage is a body-like contraption, constructed from an old back brace, brown fur and two old, curved chair legs. The body is stretched out and trapped helplessly in the carriage frame, its legs spread and sticking out at the front.

Symphonic Carriage, on the other hand, provides a good laugh. With its collapsible frame pushed downward, the carriage becomes a tight, low-riding package, a classic automobile with go-cart pretensions. A claxon front right and the end of a clarinet running the length of vehicle’s left side provide both the musical element and a set of headlights. The clarinet’s front end, without mouthpiece, sticks out at the back, doubling as an exhaust pipe. A fancy seat made of raw cotton, with goggles resting against its back, provides another laugh. So do the wooden top end of an old chair’s back, functioning as the car’s grill, and the way-too-big spare wheel attached to the rear.

The seat of Moses’ Carriage’s is a basket made of chair webbing, and two sets of mule hames, looking like sleigh runners, adorn the carriage’s sides. Concession Carriage’s bottom section is a printer’s type-set box filled with a deteriorated old baseball, wishbone slingshots, dental molds, a root, razors, shoe forms, the head of a mink stole, a mouse trap and other items no one should leave home without.

Orselli wants her work to create an experience of a different reality. About her installations, she says that they “are spaces where objects have been assigned new purpose and meaning for the viewer to contemplate.” This is true for the objects themselves, too.

Resume: Janet Orselli

2008-09-07T14:20:00.003-04:00

High Chair, 2004

Mixed media

68 x 17 x 49 in.

$ 1,200

(View 2)

JANET ORSELLI

EDUCATION
2001 MFA, Clemson University, Clemson, SC
1976 BA, Psychology, Clemson University, Clemson, SC

GRANTS AND RESIDENCIES
2007 Support Grant, South Carolina Arts Commission, Columbia, SC
2005 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, NY, NY
2005 Spring Island Visiting Artist Program, Okatie, SC
2004 Artist Exchange Program, Kaiserslautern, Germany
2002 Pritchard's Island Artist Retreat Program, Beaufort, SC
2001 Artist Scholarship for Anderson Ranch, SC Arts Commission, Columbia, SC

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2009 “Janet Orselli: Feats,” Upstairs Artspace, Tryon, NC
2008 "Loco Motion: A Carriage Migration," Art Walk, Spartanburg, SC
2007 "Janet Orselli,” OK Harris Works of Art, NY, New York
2007 "Musical Soles," Robert Mills Historic House, Columbia, SC
2006 "Dwelling Between," Turchin Center for Visual Arts, Boone, NC
2006 "Attic Habitat," Burroughs & Chapin Art Museum, Myrtle Beach, SC
2005 "Encircling Spaces," Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC
2004 "Engenderings," University of North Carolina - Charlotte, Charlotte, NC
2004 "Visceral Realities," Upstairs Gallery, Tryon, NC
2003 "Sensorium," Sumter Gallery of Art, Sumter, SC

PERFORMANCES
2009 “Feats in Flux” with Rema Keen, Upstairs Artspace, Tryon, NC
2008 “Loco Motion: A Carriage Migration,” Art Walk, Spartanburg, SC
2007 “In Dreaming” with Sheryl Enzinger, Leah Brown, Blaine Siegal, Accessibility: Sustainability, Sumter, SC
2006 “Winged Beings” with Michael Rejkovicz, Turchin Center for Visual Arts, Boone, NC
2002 “Cloister,” City Art, Columbia, SC
2001 “inner view,” SC State Museum, Columbia, SC

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2008 “Craven Arts Gallery Annual Sculpture Show,” New Bern, NC
2008 “String of Pearls,” Upstairs Artspace, Tryon, NC
2008 “Sculpturama,” Tryon Fine Arts Center, Tryon, NC, Third Place
2007 “Construction Crew 111,” Gallery 80808, Columbia, SC
2007 "In Dreaming," Accessibility: Sustainability, Sumter, SC
2006 "Traverse," Accessibility Columbia, Columbia, SC
2006 "Sanctuary," SC Birds: A Fine Arts Exhibition, City Gallery at Waterfront Park, Charleston, SC
2006 "New Artists + New Work + New Year," Blue Spiral Gallery, Asheville, NC
2005 “innerforms III,” Patriot Hall Gallery, Sumter, SC
2005 "A Sense of Place," Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, Augusta, GA
2005 "Orselli and Overend," Gallery 80808, Columbia, SC
2004 "Part to Whole," Triennial 2004, SC State Museum, Columbia, SC
2004 “For the Birds,” & “Klein Format,” Volksbank, Kaiserslautern, Germany
2004 "20th Annual Piccolo Spoleto Art Exhibition," Charleston, SC, First Place
2004 "Sanctuary," SC Birds Exhibition, Sumter Gallery of Art, Sumter, SC
2004 "Ekecheiria," Schopf Gallery on Lake, Chicago, IL, Third Place
2003 "19th Annual Piccolo Spoleto Art Exhibition," Charleston, SC, Best in Show
2003 "Valdosta National 2003,” Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA
2002 “Loci: A Sense of Place,” Gallery 80808, Columbia, SC
2002 “Extraordinary Things: A Study of Contemporary Art Through Material Culture,” Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN & Bradley University, Peoria, IL
2002 "Baggage," Accessibility Sumter, Sumter, SC
2002 “A Sense of Place,” Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, Augusta, GA
2002 “Cloister,” City Art, Columbia, SC
2001 “Impedimenta,” Lewis + Clark Gallery, Columbia, SC
2001 "inner view," Triennial 2001, SC State Museum, Columbia, SC
2001 "Soles" & "innerforms II,” Accessibility Sumter, Sumter, SC
2000 “Installations on Main,” Sumter, SC
2000 “Extraordinary Things: A Study of Contemporary Art Through Material Culture,” University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, CT
2000 "Lucy Lippard: Ana 29," The Holter Museum of Art, Helena, MT

TEACHING
2007 Artist-Teacher, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT
2006 Art Instructor, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC
2004 Art Instructor, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC

LECTURES
2006 Panel Discussion, Accessibility Columbia, Columbia Museum of Art, SC
2006 Artist Lecture, South Carolina State University, Orangeburg, SC
2005 Artist Lecture, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC
2005 Artist Lecture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC
2004 Panel Discussion, Accessibility 2004, Sumter, SC
2004 Artist Lecture, Sumter Artist’s Guild, Sumter, SC
2003 Discussion Leader, Accessibility, Sumter, SC
2003 Artist Lecture, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA
2002 Artist Lecture/Panel Discussion, Bradley University, Peoria, IL
2002 Artist Lecture/Panel Discussion, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN

REVIEWS AND ARTICLES
Carol Motsinger, “Turning Trash into Artwork,” Asheville Citizen-Times, April 2009, D2
Mary Bentz Gilkerson, “A Review of Musical Soles: A Site-Specific Installation by Janet Orselli on view at the Robert Mills House,” Free Times, May 9-15, 2007, 24
Jeffrey Day, “The Art of Travel,” The State, June 23, 2006, E18
Kathryn Martin, “Installation by Janet Orselli at Chapin Art Museum,” Art Daily, June 11, 2006
Jeffrey Day, “’Accessibility’ Stumbles on Its Lack of Access,” The State, April 30, 2006, E4
Nick Smith, “Flight Club,” Charleston City Paper, March 15, 2006
Jeffrey Day, “Battered Beauty,” The State, Sunday, March 20, 2005, E1-2
Jeffrey Day, “What’s with All the Chairs?” The State, Sunday, December 19, 2004, E1-2
Jeffrey Day, “Review: In the Here and Now,” The State, December 17, 2004, E5
Kathryn Rosenfeld, “Politically Tinged: Activist Art Comes Around Again,” Chicago Journal, August 26, 2004, Volume 4, No. 45, 13
Isabelle Girard De Soucanton, “Uberall Schrott,” Die Rheinpfalz, August 8, 2004
Donna Duren, “Organic Visions,” Metrobeat, June 23-June 29, 2004, 20
Connie Bostic, “Color Me Impressed,” Mountain Express, June 23-June 29, 2004, 42
Jeffrey Day, “How It’s Hanging,” The State, March 12, 2004, E24
Mary Bentz Gilkerson, “Vista Lights,” Free Times, November 27-December 3, 2002
Jeffrey Day, “Review: Inside and Outside, a Stirring Show,” The State, Oct. 18, 2002, E26
“Partnership Project with Anderson Ranch Arts Center,” Artifacts, Oct./Nov./Dec. 2002, 10
Teri Tynes, “Reviews (Southeast): Triennial 2001,” Art Papers, Nov/ Dec 2001, 66-67
Jeffrey Day, “In Sumter, Temporary Art Makes a Permanent Impression,” The State, Oct. 4, 2001
Jeffrey Day, “Triennial: Artist Profiles,” The State, Sunday, April 22, 2001, E3
Jeffrey Day, “Sumter Show Brings Exciting Art to Small City,” The State, Oct. 22, 2000, F4
Susan Hicks, “126 for the Show,” The Greenville News, Sunday, Oct. 31, 1999, E1

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC
Patriot Hall, Sumter, SC
Sumter Gallery of Art, Sumter, SC
Spring Island Trust, Okatie, SC
Beaufort Arts Council, Beaufort, SC

WEBSITE REPRESENTATION
Pollock-Krasner Foundation - www.pkf.org/database
SCETV- www.knowitall.org/naturalstate
Southern Arts Federation- www.southernartistry.org

Construction Crew III: December 7- 18, 2007

2007-12-04T19:06:00.000-05:00

if ART presents at

Gallery 80808/Vista Studios

808 Lady St., Columbia, S.C.

C o n s t r u c t i o n C r e w III:

STEVEN CHAPP – JEFF DONOVAN

JANET ORSELLI – EDWARD RICE

Dec. 7 – 18, 2007

Artists’ Reception: Friday, Dec. 7, 5 – 10 p.m.

Opening Hours:

Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sundays, 1 – 5 p.m.

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. and by appointment

For its holiday exhibition at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios in Columbia, S.C., if ART presents Construction Crew III, a group exhibition with work by South Carolina artists Steven Chapp, Jeff Donovan, Janet Orselli and Edward Rice. Like the first two if ART Construction Crew exhibitions in December 2005 and 2006, the show consists of two-dimensional and three-dimensional art that has strong constructional or architectural characteristics. The exhibition opens Friday, Dec. 7, with a reception from 5 –10 p.m. and runs through Dec. 18. Opening hours are weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m., Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., and Sundays 1 – 5 p.m. Chapp, Donovan, Orselli and Rice are represented by if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln St., (803) 238-2351, where additional works of art by all four artists will be on view.

Chapp will be showing monotypes, intaglio prints, drawings and paintings from the 1980s through last week. Donovan will present several major new ceramic sculptures. Orselli will show reconstructed and reconfigured old baby-carriages-turned-art-objects. Among the paintings Rice will be showing is a new series of barn paintings, in which the same barn structure is painted a dozen times in different colors.

Easley, S.C., native Steven Chapp (b. 1952) is a native of Kansas City, MO. He holds an MFA in printmaking and drawing from Clemson University and a BFA from Appalachian State University. He has shown in galleries and museums throughout the region, including the Greenville County (S.C.) Museum of Art, the Burroughs and Chapin Museum in Myrtle Beach, S.C. and the Pickens County (S.C.) Museum of Art and History. He worked on two projects with artists Christo and Jean Claude, in Kansas City in 1978 and Key Biscayne, Fla., in 1983.

Jeff Donovan (b. 1957) has been a fixture on the Columbia, S.C., art scene for many years. The painter and ceramic sculptor was born in Millford, Del., and studied at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Fla., and the Penland School of Crafts in Penland, N.C. Donovan has exhibited widely throughout South and North Carolina. He is represented in the Mark B. Coplan Collection of South Carolina Art, the prominent ceramic sculpture collection of Ron Porter and Joe Price in Columbia and in the collection of Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina. Donovan also works as an art conservator with ReNewell Fine Art Conservation in Columbia.

Janet Orselli (b. 1954) was born in Columbia, S.C., where she lived until November 2007, when she moved to Mill Spring, N.C. In 1976, she graduated from Clemson Unversity with a degree in psychology. In the 1990s she gradually switched careers from the field of mental health to art. While establishing herself as an artist, she earned an M.F.A. from Clemson in 2001. She was selected for the 2001 and 2004 South Carolina Triennial exhibitions as well as the 2004 traveling exhibition “South Carolina Birds: A Fine Arts Exhibition.” Earlier this year, Orselli has a solo show at O.K. Harris Gallery in New York City. Orselli has done large installations at the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, S.C., the Burroughs & Chapin Museum in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. Orselli has received several residencies and fellowships, including at Anderson Ranch in Colorado and in Kaiserslautern, Germany. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship.

North Augusta, S.C., native Edward Rice (b. 1953) lives in Augusta, Ga. He is one of the Southeast’s most prominent contemporary painters. Rice’s solo exhibitions include those at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C., the Greenville County (S.C.) Museum of Art, the Chattahoochee Valley Art Museum in La Grange, Ga., and the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C. Rice also was represented in The Story of the South: Art and Culture, 1890 – 2003, the inaugural exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. “Edward Rice: Architectural Works, 1978-1998” was published by the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art in Augusta, Ga., and “Edward Rice: Recent Monotypes,” by the Morris Museum of Art in 2003.

For more information, please contact if ART Gallery owner, Wim Roefs at (803) 238-2351 or wroefs@sc.rr.com

Artist's Statement: Janet Orselli

2007-11-14T10:13:00.002-05:00

My installations are spaces where objects have been assigned new purpose and meaning for the viewer to contemplate. Each installation is about creating a whole experience, another reality, for the viewer to enter within.

Janet Orselli Artist Statements 2010 & 2011

2007-01-06T19:43:00.010-05:00

ARTIST STATEMENT

JANET ORSELLI AT OK HARRIS WORKS OF ART

2010

My raw materials are leftovers from the past, or what some might call “worn out stuff”. The objects I chose are survivors -- yet seem to have lost their usefulness and reason for being. They live in dark spider webby attic corners, inside boxes hidden in the basement, or in the junk pile down the street. These objects have a story to tell -- if we listen. Rusty and often stuck - this body of work still moves (some). All of them want to move more. Each struggles to get ahead - some drag a weight behind them, others have a shell to break through, and still others - await takeoff. They are all trying awful hard. Ultimately they attain arthood by releasing their object identity and joining others in a new (lively) purpose.

ARTIST STATEMENT

JANET ORSELLI @ if ART Gallery, 2011

Early on with my art, and in my life as well, I discovered that exactly what I thought I wanted did not appear nor was easily “found”. So I began instead to pay attention to what I did “find” and what seemed to call out to me. Certain objects pulled me to them and I didn’t know why. I could feel some connection; a value beyond what I could see. So I carried them home to my studio and asked them questions like, “what do you want to be? Where do you want to be? What can you bring to the world in your strongest, most powerful way?” Usually the answers to the questions had nothing to do with what the object had been originally.

Once I feel their meaning individually I can get a sense of how they can be joined with others. Through trial and error I experience how they become stronger but only if joined in a particular way and with the right “others”. This is a time consuming process - often what seems intellectually like it “should” work is a dismal failure and vice versa. For the work to really come “alive” each object has to be fully what it is yet also be a contributing member of the whole. The entire work must pull its weight and speak its truth clearly.

Janet Orselli: Impedimenta

2005-12-14T14:35:00.002-05:00

Impedimenta (Pitchfork),

found object construction, $850.

Impedimenta (Dustpan),