UIS Visual Arts Gallery Strange Matter Opening

(Note: Original story with multimedia elements can be viewed here.)

Chicago based artists Sarah and Joseph Belknap celebrated the opening of their show Strange Matter during at a reception in the University of Illinois at Springfield’s Visual Arts Gallery.

Students and residents came to see the installation. The Belknaps spoke with many of them at length about their work.

Gallery director Jeff Robinson says the gallery aims to brings in artists that add diversity to the traditional art work commonly displayed throughout Springfield.

Robinson loves the way the Belknaps engage the space. “This isn’t an easy space to transform,” he said. “[The gallery] is something of a white cube type space. They way they change the atmosphere is really nice.”

Students Whitney Snead and Kiev Glasscock came to meet the artists. They heard about the opening in their drawing class. “This isn’t something I normally see, but something I really enjoy. It really made you think and I think that’s more of what art should be,” Glasscock said.

Graphite is worked into all surfaces and materials of the installation. Artist Joseph Belknap says it is the most stable of carbon forms and meant to suspend time and movement.

“It’s a representation of touch suspended in a stable form of carbon,” he said. “In a tongue in cheek way, kind of like Han Solo suspended in carbonite. A reference we wouldn’t shy away from.”

Gallery manager Allison Lacher enjoys the tactile aspect of the installation.

“There’s something very serious about their work, but it has a quiet playfulness to it that [Jeff and I] thought would be a really interesting inclusion to [the gallery] calendar,” Lacher said.

UIS student Mille Olstead left a little disappointed by the exhibition.

“I don’t think I fully grasped what the artists were going for. I didn’t really get it,” Olstead said.

Still, Lacher says the exhibit has been drawing in people at a higher rate than usual. “They’ve asked us not to turn the lights off. Anybody walking across campus is going to see this pink light glowing from that architectural window at the corner of the gallery.”

What’s next for the Belknaps? They say they’re working with a scientist at the University of Chicago to help install a new “microwave” at the South Pole telescope, a trip that would last no less than six months.