Machine Surrounded By Birds
Dean Dass, a professor of studio art at the University of Virginia, will open an exhibition of works on paper, “The Lost Colony,” with a reception and gallery talk from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4 in Sweet Briar College’s Babcock Gallery. The exhibition will be open through March 28. Admission is free.
Dass, who teaches printmaking and leads the distinguished majors’ seminar at UVa’s McIntire Department of Art, will show about 40 works, including collage, pencil, gouache, ink and mixed media such as clay and mica.
“The Lost Colony” began as a chapter in “The New World,” a collaboration by a team of artists and writers, including Dass, who produced a book, exhibition and archive of the three-year project. The title refers to the mysterious disappearance of more than 100 English settlers who were left in 1587 on Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina. “The Lost Colony” is inspired by the drawings of the colony’s official artist, John White.
“It imagines a specific historical event as a trope for our entire civilization,” Dass said of the exhibit. “What if we were wrong?”
A number of recurring images in the collection play many roles in the show’s narrative, the artist said, including “Machine Surrounded by Birds.”
Pink Head
“There are a number of machines, power plants, etcetera, in the exhibition. They are part of the development of the colony,” Dass said. “The birds fulfill many tropes in the exhibition. They are nature, of course, and they are observers of the colony. What happens to the birds in the various pictures echoes what is happening in the colony. The birds are nature’s reproach to mankind.”
Dass will expand on the context of the show during his gallery talk at the opening.
Babcock Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and when the building is open for lectures, performances or other College-sponsored events. For more information, contact galleries director Karol Lawson at “klawson @ sbc.edu” (remove spaces and quotes) or (434) 381-6248.
