Meridith Pingree  

Meridith Pingree's upcoming show  Squishy Geometry @ Sarah Lawrence College's Barbara Walters Gallery,  April 3 thru May 1, 2008. Opening Reception April 10, 2008 6-8 pm  

EXHIBITS AND LECTURES BY EMERGING ARTISTS SHOWCASE VISUAL ARTS AT SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE

Meridith Pingree “Squishy Geometry”
Thursday, April 3rd 2008 to Thursday May 1st 2008
Barbara Walters Gallery
Hours: M – F 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. S/S 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 10th from 5:00pm to 6:30pm

March 13, 2008 Yonkers, NY - Sarah Lawrence College is pleased to announce “Squishy Geomety”, a solo exhibition of kinetic sculpture by Meridith Pingree. On view at the Heimbold Visual Art Center’s Barbara Walters Gallery, it is free and open to the Public. For more information please call 914-395- 2355 or e-mail cstayrook@slc.edu.

Meridith Pingree’s exhibition is a part of the on-going emerging artists series held during the 2007-2008 academic year. Members of the college’s visual arts and visual culture faculty in conjunction with their students select each artist in the series.

Squishy Geometry features kinetic sculptures and related drawings by Meridith Pingree. The artist physically tracks human behavior and traffic patterns utilizing quasi-scientific, homespun, reactive sculptures. Sensors pick up on people's energy and movement throughout the gallery; her work exists as amplifications of this subtle energy, creating unconventional, complex portraits of people and spaces. Sourcing dreams, magic, plant life, robotics, geometry, and textile design, she amalgamates these into amoebic creatures.

The Yellow Star hanging central in the gallery feeds off ambient energy. The transparent ring mutates its shape, expanding, and contracting in slow jarring movements using motion sensors coupled with small motors. Within other works, kinetic links of a centipede-like creature respond individually to create a live mutating curve; toys, car parts, zipper tape, and plastic spider rings connect with their own rhythm into geometric textiles making up the bodies of the microbe-like critters. The two, three, and four-dimensional pieces exist together, not unlike a more typical eco-system. The sculptures can see themselves. Something like an ice crystal or a virus, they move and grow falling into complex patterns of movement responding to each other, questioning social interaction, meanings of time, and what it is when we consider something to be alive.