white whale

source: wcmawilliamsedu
Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents Tristin Lowe: Mocha Dick, a 52-foot-long, ghostly white sperm whale made out of industrial wool felt. Mocha Dick was inspired by the whale that once harassed sailing ships near Mocha Island in the South Pacific Ocean. Described as having flesh as “white as wool,” that same whale was also the basis for Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick. On Thursday, April 8 at 4:30 pm, the museum will be hosting a multidisciplinary discussion focusing on Tristin Lowe’s sculpture and Melville’s novel with a variety of faculty from Williams College and the Williams-Mystic Program. This is a free program and all are invited to attend. A full list of participants follows.

Sprawled across the museum’s largest gallery, Mocha Dick has the size and feel of an actual whale. Lowe achieves this effect through his use of industrial wool felt, which mimics the appearance of flesh. The wool is carefully stitched, pieced, and threaded together so that these constructed seams and zippers appear as harpoon-scars and squid-besieged gashes. The wool covers an armature and inflatable device that creates the look of muscular form. Lowe also hand-attaches wool-crafted barnacles to the whale’s side, which, in addition to the scars and gashes, give the whale an older, embattled aura. Lowe invites viewers to consider the magnificence of the whale, the legacy of whaling, the care of our environment, and how the epic leviathan continues to capture the imagination.

“The body and flesh of Mocha Dick remind us of an actual, physical landscape; the wool is almost like a topographical map,” explains Class of 1956 Director Lisa Corrin. “Herman Melville worked on Moby-Dick while living in Pittsfield in the shadow of Mount Greylock, which reminded him of the whale. This sculpture will remind our students and all of our visitors of the extraordinary literary and artistic legacy that has made our region so culturally significant. We are looking forward to the multidisciplinary programs, from the English Department to Environmental Studies and the Williams-Mystic Program, which will explore the many issues that this artwork inspires us to consider.”

This exhibition continues WCMA’s year-long focus on art and landscape—landscape in all of its guises: as topography, sustainer of life, site of conservation activism, cultural icon, metaphor, and object of awe and reverence. Mocha Dick was originally shown in Philadelphia at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in May 2009. It will be on view at WCMA from March 13-August 8, 2010.

About the Artist
Tristin Lowe (b. 1966) is a multidisciplinary artist interested in using a range of materials toward unexpected ends. Lowe received his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and studied at Parsons School of Design and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has exhibited his work extensively in Philadelphia, including at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Vox Populi, Girard College, The Rosenbach Museum and Library, The Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, Basekamp, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, The Project Room, Abington Art Center, and Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; New Langton Arts, San Francisco; University of California, San Diego; Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Provincetown; Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; and the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Switzerland. He has been awarded a Pew Fellowship, Provincetown Fine Art Work Center Fellowship, The Fabric Workshop and Museum Residency, and Girard College Residency. He was co-founder and co-director of the non-profit gallery Blohard. Lowe’s work is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and The West Collection, as well as other private collections. He now lives and works in Philadelphia.
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source: fabricworkshopandmuseumorg
Tristin Lowe’s choice of materials has always been low-tech and low-brow; he has intentionally focused on crude materials and often crass ideas–a bed that continually wets itself or a foam figure that throws up on itself, as examples. Identifying with the clown, Lowe sees the archetype as having license to make a fool of himself, an association that, in turn, allowed Lowe as an artist to explore unorthodox new directions and materials in his work. It also relates to his interest in the risk-taking of authors allied with the Theater of the Absurd.

Lowe’s Alice is a 23-foot inflatable, vinyl-coated fabric, bright blue girl. She is unclothed, with shoulder length hair surrounding a face defined by one large eye. The sculpture, which was made in an edition of two, is a blow-up figure, evoking Carroll’s Alice who grows and shrinks depending on the food or potions she imbibes. Alice, like her fairytale counterpart, offers a rich metaphor for the universally fraught transition from childhood to adulthood. This blue stand-in for a child is full of ambivalent yet intriguing qualities—she is sexually undeveloped (yet in many cases Lowe installs the two Alices together in what are unmistakably sexualized poses), larger than life in scale, at once naïve and terrifying. Her single eye, reminiscent of the rabbit’s hole that begins Alice’s journey of self-discover y, references an Eastern spiritual concept of the mind’s eye, or the unconscious, unexplored territory within every individual.

Mocha Dick, fabricated from white industrial felt and measuring fifty–two feet long, is a recreation of the real-life albino sperm whale that terrorized whaling vessels in the early nineteenth century and inspired Herman Melville’s literary classic.

Bio
American, born 1966, lives in Philadelphia
Tristin Lowe studied art at the Parson School of Design in New York from 1984 until 1986, before moving to Boston to complete his BFA in sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art (1987–1990). He has been awarded a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2012), Pew Fellowship in the Arts (sculpture) (1994-95), a Provincetown Fine Art Work Center Fellowship (1990-01), and in 1989, a Fellowship at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME. Lowe was Artist-in-Residence at The Fabric Workshop and Museum (1998, 2009, and 2011), Philadelphia, PA; Girard College (2003-04), Philadelphia, PA; and at the Rosenbach Museum and Library (1998), Philadelphia, PA. In 2001, he received the Louis Fernley Award.

He has exhibited his work extensively in Philadelphia at venues including The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Fleisher/Ollman, Vox Populi, Girard College, and the Rosenbach Museum and Library. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at Rhode Island School of Design Museum; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville; Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; New Langton Arts, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; and the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Switzerland. He was co-founder and co-director of the non-profit gallery Blohard. Lowe’s work is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, The West Collection, and the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper.