On opening weekend of our Seepages exhibit, curator Caroline Lathan-Stiefel and participating artists Van Stiefel and John Otte elucidated their ideas behind the exhibit. Quite insightful, we thought we would share with you some of the highlights.

Over the last 10 years, the concept of seepage has been an integral part of artist and curator Caroline Lathan-Stiefel’s work. For her, “seepage” implies a system breakdown, as well as “a flow that breaks up a clog.” The exhibit Seepages is a collaborative project by a group of artists whose works can be seen as a response to inhabiting and navigating contemporary urban and suburban environments. This group installation explores the idea that urban, suburban, and natural realms are not separate entities, but rather permeable, fluid spaces that connect and seep into each other.

To illustrate how seepage has been part of her artistic trajectory, Caroline shows pictures of an earlier project Roam, for which she made small, outdoor installations around her suburban home. Other earlier projects she discussed included the creation of an outdoor installation attached to a scarred tree in her backyard, which had lost its limbs in a storm.

Caroline stands next to Thomas Vance’s Niwaki sculptures that reference the cloud-like pruned trees in Japanese suburban gardens. For Caroline, the Niwaki sculptures relate to the concept of “suburban” seepage, while also conjuring up the unsettling feeling that arises when humans attempt to control nature.

For Van Stiefel, sound is extremely pertinent to the seepages concept because “…we have eyelids not earlids!” His sound installation consists of eight tracks comprised of natural sounds mixed with synthetic sounds. The computer then creates uncontrolled melodies from these sounds. Married to Caroline, Van Stiefel has created “field recordings” of sounds around their suburban home ranging from the sound of ice melting in their gutters to mixing the sounds of birds chirping in the early morning and evening.

 Artist John Otte reflects upon the art-making process as one that is cathartic: For Otte, artists create their art in the midst of considerable “destructive, ugly and frightening stuff”.” Making art serves as a “…way to make it better and inhabitable and somehow get us through the day.” In reference to the exhibition space for the installation, Otte remarks that whitespace itself is reflective of seepages, since it too is a “hybrid place – there’s already a lot of seepages in here.”

Ward Davenny and Kate Stewart stand in front of their collaborative mixed-media painting “Smoke Drawing.” Inspired by Ward’s enthusiasm for chasing storms, he and Kate thought of seepages as smoke or a storm cloud brewing. With this in mind, they decided to take a torch and smoke the canvas.

Crowd in front of “Hinterland,” a group installation by Caroline Lathan-Stiefel (fabric sculpture), John Otte (brick wall collage & video), and Van Stiefel (sound).