Vandeville Exhibits At Copper Country Community Art Center

Hancock - February 6, 2010

Thursday evening an opening reception was held for artist Denise Vandeville at the Copper Country Community Art Center.

Denise is an amazing artist whose installation “Dignity” has transformed the Hancock Gallery.

Denise Vandeville is the Dean of Finlandia University’s School of Art and Design. Prior to coming to Finlandia, Vandeville taught for many years at Bay Du Noc Community College.

Vandeville received her Master of Fine Arts in ceramics from the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Finlandia University.

In 2008 Denise was invited to Oxford University, England, to present her research on fractal geometry and aesthetic preference.

Vandeville has a studio located on an 80 acre Finnish Homestead in the Copper Country. She has many public commissions.

Her installation depicts the role of craftsmen in the 21st Century. She wants to make us think of the idea of value; pieces made by hand and those pieces made in whole or part by machine. What alters the value of those pieces?

Vandeville (above left) told the large audience gathered for her Thursday opening that she believes that art is all about “Form & Content”, formal qualities, how it looks and how it feels. What is its idea? It should show some formal choices that help define content and understand the ideological force behind it.

“When I make or view work I am always interested in the play of formal and contextual components, how it looks and what it says are locked into an eternal dance that is a celebration of the mystery of art”, Vandeville stated in an interview with Karen Johnson, Finlandia Communications Director.

Denise describes fractal geometry as a mathematical formula discovered in the 70s and defines nature and how it’s constructed. It calms the human mind and puts the viewer in a meditated atmosphere.

She points to her fantastic ceramic skeleton and states that the glaze is designed to crack according to fractal geometry, it represents a dry clay bed in nature.

Answering a question regarding the four heads standing at the foot and head of the skeleton, Denise says that it is a representation of heads denoting the future... where we’re going… minds without bodies into a digital world. People of the future mourning the death of the past, the art of the 21st Century looking down at the death of the old.

Slide Show

The skulls which are displayed around the room while looking identical are not. Each skull is designed individually on a bisque plate and then glazed. The skulls represent humanity in its basic form, minus race, sex or other deviations.

Denise made the wooden spoons placed between each of the skulls. She placed them so as to slow down the eye as it travels through the rhythm of the room. Denise enjoyed making the spoons as she hasn’t worked with wood for many years. The wooden spoons represent a quality with folk art being pushed aside as we enter the 21st century.

Pictured above - Denise's Husband "Mike"

Vandeville thanked one of her students, Finlandia University ceramic arts Senior Jaimianne Amicucci, for the clay recipe that Vandeville used in her clay disks.

A happy accident (so-to-speak) occurred when the disks were placed in the Art Center’s window. They created a beautiful chiming sound. Nice enough that music originally scheduled for inclusion in the installation was omitted.

Vandeville’s art installation will be exhibited at the Kerredge Gallery of the Copper
Country Community Arts Center through February 27th.
The Art Center is located at 26 Quincy Street, Hancock. Gallery hours are: Tuesday throughThursday, 10am-6pm, Friday 10am-8pm and Saturday 1pm-5pm

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