Peripheral Visions focuses on the community as well as individuality formed in the first year of the Studio Art MFA Program, showing a group of very different artists working and learning how to grow together. The word peripheral becomes the crux in understanding the show as a collective vision, while also highlighting the distance and boundaries that exist between each individual’s studio practice. Featuring the work of Lizzi Alarcon, Basmah Alhumaid, Chelsey Anderson, Amber Cruz, Jennifer Frank, Nieko McDaniel, Matthew Russo, and Cindy Warshaw.
A selection of Broel’s life-sized to monumentally-sized totemic bronze sculptures creates space for reflection and contemplation about what it means to be human, be engaged as an individual within community and interact intentionally with the natural world. In his series of vertically oriented structures, Broel references tangible and intangible notions that resonate universally: botanical and architectural structures, environmental rhythms, physical and emotional solitude. Intentional abstraction creates a generous context for engaging with the sculptures. Allusions to historical references create a sense of timelessness and familiarity, yet the pieces exist outside the rapidly shifting visual language of stylized contemporary aesthetics. This unique sculptural installation exposes viewers to aspects of the American rural West’s untamed spirit, vast rugged landscapes, and traditions of mysticism. Broel’s intentional decision to live and work in a small agrarian community in the Pacific Northwest provides viewers with a raw vision of inward examinations that relate more to the health of the psyche than to the pop-culture echo chamber. The work is a complex fusion of expressions: longing, melancholy, hope and contentment.