Principia College held the opening reception of a local artist in Voney Art Center on Tuesday, Sept. 9, hosting off-campus guests, Principia faculty, and students.
Thomas Sleet, a St. Louis based contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture, was invited by Principia faculty to showcase his solo art exhibit “Up River: A Path Forward” in the James K. Schmidt Gallery. The exhibit featured six of Sleet’s works of art, a combination of stand-alone and mounted pieces.
Post-Graduate Teaching Intern Zemma Kitchen spent the first two weeks of the semester helping Sleet build his displays. According to informational pamphlets on the art available at the gallery, Sleet’s pieces are made to demonstrate the duality between the natural world and modern urban landscaping.
“It is incredibly impressive what he did to pull this together,” Kitchen said. “I think the meaning of his work and his connection with the land is really important, and that’s something that I really empathize with because I grew up in nature.”
The centerpiece of the exhibit featured a 16-by-7-foot life-sized sculpture titled “Temple of Solace.” Viewers could walk around inside the sculpture as an interactive part of the exhibit. The sculpture is composed of “I” blocks, which are wooden pieces cut from various buildings and trees. Each one is in the same “I” shape, but with different dimensions. Sleet explained this uniqueness as a metaphor for human life.
“This is sort of similar to the culture we live in. Each of us is different, but together we are stronger than we are as these different parts,” Sleet said.
Sleet’s work focuses on innovation and progress, which takes humanity upward, as reflected by the verticality of his pieces. Art History Professor and Gallery Director Sara Borja saw the intricate quality of the foundation of the temple as a valuable message for students.
“Each level had to have that quality of evenness to it, cause if you don’t have that sense of a foundation, you can kind of get off-kilter,” she said. “I like that idea of having just a really strong foundation, and how important that is for building up and being successful.”
Sleet’s wife, Denise, and her sister Diane Peal attended the opening. Denise Sleet said that since she had already seen all the pieces, she did not have a new reaction to them, but enjoyed seeing her husband have the opportunity to present his work. Peal said the works her brother-in-law showed at Voney were some of his best.
“He has a lot of good pieces, but these are definitely the strongest,” Peal said.
During his opening, the artist told visitors that a key part of his work comes from his sense of identity. He said he does not identify as being from a specific place or physical locale, but identifies as “indigenous.”
Peal said that labelless existence was on brand for him. “That sounds to me like exactly who he is. I am not at all surprised he said that,” she said.
The James K. Schmidt gallery will host another solo exhibit in the spring semester, showcasing the work of artist Matthew Whitney.