Scavenged objects, picked up in New Mexican arroyos and along the San Francisco Bay waterfront, form the basis of new sculptures created by Gina Telcocci that are on display in City of Mud’s two-artist show opening on May 5.
“These materials have distinctive characters, with their surfaces hinting at former lives and the power of time and the elements,” says Telcocci, a native Santa Fean now living in Oakland, California. “Most of my work is primarily about form, contours and textures. Weathered wood is used to build forms or as accents on larger forms. I also use simple weaving techniques to create pieces that are subsequently plastered, collaged and sanded down. These are processes that imitate aging and eroding forces.”
Two pieces in the exhibit illustrate the visual differences between materials scavenged from New Mexico and California. “Old time” is a clock in the form of a simple house made from wood found around the Bay Area. “The wood is beautiful to me and I wonder where it comes from,” Telcocci says. “A shipwreck, a coastal flood or somewhere in the Pacific?”
“Vox box” is a box made from plywood aged in the New Mexico sun. It was originally part of an installation and has a motion-activated sound element.
“Both of these sculptures are simple forms that kind of symbolize human activities to me-architecture and geometry-which I think of as representing some of our higher impulses for order, shelter and ingenuity,” she adds.
Telcocci shares the show with Joseph Griffo, who was born in Woodstock, New York and has spent the past 24 years in Santa Fe making art and studying art theory. His work ranges from contemporary landscapes and figure work to non-objective abstraction.
He says that putting down roots in the Southwest has given him time to hone a connection with rustic and organic materials such as gypsum, wax, terra cotta, resin and graphite.
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