Artist Talk with Carol Emmons

 Artist Talk w/ Carol Emmons 

On Wednesday, January 25, 2023. I attended an artist talk at the Wriston Auditorium. The artist featured was Carol Emmons, who specializes in large, site-specific installations. She has traveled to the U.S. (Cleveland, Houston, Cincinnati, New York, Santa Ana) and parts of Europe (Germany and the Netherlands) to showcase her exhibits. She was also selected for eight Wisconsin Triennial exhibitions at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. So, having a very accomplished artist talk about their work and the process of their installations was fascinating. 

    I really enjoyed the layout of her presentation the most, it allows me to easily follow along with her concept question and helped me get a grasp on what direction she was headed within her own artist's process as well as which of those aspects we can relate to and possibly utilize within our own work. She started the presentation off by stating something that I thought was really profound "you may not know the direction of your art" that always makes me happy when I hear it because knowing that even well-known artists are just regular people and not many always see the direction of their work. So, hearing her state that early on was something that caught my attention and made me want to hear more about her process. 

    She then goes on to ask the question that is the basis of the whole talk. "Where does art come from?" what I found to be intriguing was not just the question but also the way she structured the rest of the presentation around that question. How every topic or statement made flowed into one another and gave context and emphasized a lot of concepts already known within the art world, but getting to hear the way she articulated it made me feel like she was speaking more to the person behind the artist and asking us what we draw our expression from or how we could look further into how we create our own art and how we can implement these topics to make a connection between ourselves and the outside world. For instance, the presentation topics were hereditary, Education, research, Site, Theme/Series, and Magic? and I found that I really connected with the installation presented in 'Education'. I thought her explanation of her history within educational institutions was really thorough and articulate and made me want to draw my own connections through my experiences. 

“The poet, the artist, the sleuth – whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely “well adjusted”, he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strong bond often exists among antisocial types in their power to see environments as they really are” (McLuhan, 88)