Art embraces the winter season as the Lynden Sculpture Garden extends its inaugural theme through the colder months in the exhibition “Inside/Outside: Eddee Daniel and Philip Krejcarek” (through Dec. 12). The two artists and educators coordinate exhibitions inside the former Bradley home and collaborate on 11 outdoor installations.
Inside are Daniel’s photographic prints from his “Accidental Art” series, which looks at how fencing (particularly blaze-orange access control fencing and black environmental impact fencing) affects the city’s natural aesthetics, including local river environments. Slick poignantly shows industrial fencing from across a river, where rainbow colors gleam in the water, while Calligraphy captures orange fencing hidden amid snowy layers and bare black winter branches.
Krejcarek’s small foam-core constructions stand on pedestals in the gallery’s center. Completed in 1999, these sculptures from his “Architectural Structures”series began as models for full-scale installations that reflect with stark simplicity on our sociological relationships to home. Elopement places a blue ladder against a white wall as it meets an open second-story window. In A House Divided Krejcarek literally splits the house’s interior in two, with a tiny blue ladder appearing on one side only.
The installations require sturdy walking shoes to enjoy. These individual sculptures use only two elementsorange fencing and blue laddersto illustrate how placement alone changes the context of tone, meaning and emotional response in art. While several installations appear playful, others connect to a foreboding presence by controlling access with barriers or walling off the permanent sculptures. Shadows, light and snow alter their impressions.
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Inside and outside, the exhibition juxtaposes industrial elements against the indigenous vegetation in the gardens or in photographed natural habitats. The exhibition depicts the idea of constant change to the environments in which human beings live, encouraging viewers to think about the resulting effects. Do these changes preserve or destroy our interior and exterior habitats? In every season, careless human interaction with the environment can distort its beauty.
