SUMMARY AND TIMELINE OF MY WORK
By Trent Thursby Alvey
TOASTER WORSHIP - 1992
Out of the Land: Utah Women - September 1992
Toaster Worship was first exhibited as part of the group exhibit, “Out of the Land” curated by Cathy Wilson in 1992. It later traveled to Washington DC to the National Museum of Women in the Arts Feb. 18 – May 26, 1993.
Toaster Worship is included in both editions of Artist’s of Utah books (editors: Robert S. Olpin, William C. Seifrit, Vern G. Swanson).
Toaster Worship, 1992 Assemblage 10’ x 6’ x 2.5’
Back in 1992, I remember being inspired by a box full of 1950’s toys that my son found at a garage sale. He said, ‘Hey, look at what I found, I think you might like these.’ It was a box full of rubber people and animals toys. The people were the pinnacle of 1950’s stereotyping, a doctor, a nurse, a little boy, a mom, a circus tiger and elephant.
My memories from the 50’s were that as Americans, we were eagerly perusing our destiny. A destiny that has now turned into our entitlement, but then it was genuine. We had come through a world war and now it was our time to realize the American dream – washers, dryers, ovens, freezers, vacuum cleaners, irons, toaster and all the rest had become the icons for happiness. This was the innocent beginning of a monstrous, destructive consumerism that has become synonymous with America for the last fifty plus years.
Quote by Dolores Chase:
Trent Alvey's "Toaster Worship." is a remarkable piece that triggers dialogue in its iconic presentation of a ubiquitous household object. Trent's makes us smile and think. She has done many brave and ambitious pieces over the years, one of which I own. She continues to grow and experiment--often combining disciplines in enigmatic ways, one of them being her wave theory / physics installations in steel and neon. She takes risks and always creates compelling and thought-provoking work. This piece was in the catalog of the Women's show that traveled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. I saw that show and was so proud to be able to see our women artists on display there. The museum would be fortunate to own one of her pieces, and this one would be particularly interesting in this State and at this time when as a nation we are so focused on issues related to domestic life and our attitudes towards gender/roles, consumerism, energy, etc.
Newspaper coverage from 1992:
“In other works, familiar aspects of life at home constitute landscapes of humor and irony. Household appliances over whelm a tiny are-worn woman in Trent Alvey’s mixed-media sculpture, “Toaster Worship.” Like a dowdy music-box ballerina, a housewife turns on a stack of bread between twin toasters.” SL Tribune, Sunday January 31, 1993. The article entitled “Land draws outrage and Admiration” by Alice Brown-Wagner
another assemblege from 1992:
GE verses Godzilla, assemblege1992
ASSEMBLEGES
I did a number of assemblage pieces at that time, one of which was called “The Atomic Nutcracker”, which was in a holiday exhibit at the SL Art Center. It featured a slowly turning walnut atop a silver cylinder with white neon in the atomic symbol configuration surrounding it. Also the piece pictured above entitled “GE meets Godzilla”, again using my then favorite medium . . . small appliances.
'Wave Panel' from Encountering Energy installation at Finch Lane Gallery 1996
INSTALLATIONS:
Next came the Installations. I did a series of Five Installations, which were exhibited at Finch Lane Gallery in 1994, 1998, 2000, Art Access in 2001 and Kimball Art Center in 2004. All of this installation explored the nature of form and looked at the proximity of science and spirituality. Each of those exhibits also featured performance art on the weekend following the opening, I remember one performance at Finch Lane for my installation entitled “Encountering Energy: Losing Our Addiction to Form”. I had invited a theoretical physicist, a belly dancer and a performance poet to perform in the space. I felt like I’d created a new religion at the end of the performance. I had people coming up to me and asking when the next “energy performance” was going to be. In that exhibit, I created 3-D pieces that included sound.
From these installations, a distinct progression emerged. My study of Buddhism and my practice of Tai Chi brought me to try to understand the nature of form. The exhibits grew naturally out of progressive study and manifested my discoveries into the exhibit. Art has always been my best teacher.
My installation exhibits included; mixed media art, writing, and usually performance, lecture or presentation component.
Five Realities: Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form.
Finch Lane Gallery - 1996.
Investigating the nature of form and the prison of limitations it creates for us. This exhibit included painting, neon and steel monolith sculptures, five army cots, five iron fabricated slippers and a video. The video, created by Scott Carrier, interviewed five people that I felt had found a degree of enlightenment through their own paths. Scott interviewed Doug Peacock, who gained his insights through his Vietnam experience; Alan Burgess, a mountain climber who spent most of his life in Nepal and Tibet, Carlie Jimenez, who at age five stayed in bed for a year with rhumatic fever, forcing her consciousness inward; Alex Caldiero, a performance poet; and Hilarie Carrier, a dancer.
Encountering Energy: Loosing our Addiction to Form.
Finch Lane Gallery - 1998
This exhibit was a continuing effort to look at the nature of form by understanding that form is really energy. I was completely amazed when I began reading about Quantum Physics and specifically how energy works. The installation in the west room of Finch Lane Gallery included science panels including information about Wilhelm Reich and his Orgone Energy, plus banners depicting ancient knowledge that coincides with the new science, and a 10’ long neon and steel wave panel. Wilhelm Reich, a little known, medical doctor and psychiatrist, studied energy and its effects on the body. All of his books and research was burned on the street in NYC In 1950. His work was so controversial but paved the way for the make love not war movement in the 1960’s.
Performance and presentation for Encountering Energy included the poet, Alex Caldiero; a belly dancer, Sara Caldiero; and the high energy physicist, Michael Solomon, lecturing on the missing mass of the universe.
Frequency Generator 36” in diameter / 60” tall
There are three of these interactive pieces.
Sacred/ Profane acrylic and string on canvas 60” x 60”
Monochromatic paintings in basic geometric shapes
Frequency Manifest Form: All matter is Vibrational Pattern. Finch Lane Gallery - 2000
This installation includes paintings, poetry and sculptural pieces called frequency generators, when the generators are stroked with a bow, the sand on the surface arranges itself into intricate and delicate patterns. A discovery that came from the exhibit was that when different people pulled the bow across the edge of the surface they sometimes created their own specific designs. The exhibit was based on the concepts of string theory, a mathematical concept which states that all matter is just a vibrational pattern. The paintings are all monochromatic depicting the basic geometrical shapes, further reinforcing the idea that all information comes to us in vibrations: ie, color, sound, digital data, all of which travel electromagnetically in waves.
Performance and presentation for Frequency Manifests Form included a Butoh Performance by Jerry Gardner’s Red Junkett and a lecture by mathematician and then chairman of the Mathmatics Department at the University of Utah, Jim Carleson, on string theory. Harpist, ShruDeLi Ownbey played the harp during the opening.
Blue Lotus Lake: The Illusion of separateness
Art Access Gallery Oct 2001
The Installation was a return to the beginning work, FIVE REALITIES. It Is the place where dualities come together. While the first exhibit took a mostly Zen approach, this exhibit will reflect my journey into Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism. The 1996 exhibit examined the dilemma of being imprisoned in this reality, while understanding its transitory nature; Blue Lotus Lake takes a more realized view of the duality of this existence. Blue Lotus Lake is the illiteration of Shakti and Shiva and their eternal dance bringing being and non-being together. It is colorful and graphic, using a series of icons which make up a lexicon of sacred truths.
Between Heaven and Earth installation room view, Kimball Art Center, Badami Gallery
Ocean of Energy mixed media on canvas, 72” x 84”
Between Heaven and Earth - mixed media: cotts, leaves, metallic paint, sticks
(there is a nuclear shadow of a figure on each cott)
BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH: Looking Inward, 2003
Kimball Art Center
This installation of art (Kimball Art Center) is the visual manifestation of my practice becoming internalized. I experimented with process and materials, which would give me the illumination that I was seeking. The composition remains simple, while the process takes on a life of its own, taking me wherever it wants. I give myself to this work and allow it to speak for itself. Keeping the palate rich and limited, using white, umber, gold, spare amounts of culturally rich red and blue, then I allow the auspiciousness of metallic, gold, copper and bronze. I am attempting to dissolve the intellectual and emotional veils that obscure the nature of the mind.
I am beginning to feel my place on the planet, my place between earth and sky. With age, I am beginning to feel the ancestral ties to family, to a clan of friends, the power of lineage. Also realizing our “connectedness” to each other and to all living things on the planet, I’ve begun to feel something that I can only describe as tribal wisdom.
The best way for me to understand life is through my art. Art has been my teacher throughout the years. Usually the art piece emerges as a closing or “offering” that will allow me to move forward. It is the processing of observing, not of judging.
IMPLICATE ORDER
My unfinished and ongoing installation is called Implicate Order after David Bohm’s description of the common consciousness. My installation, Implicate Order, is a dialogue between elements: rope, wood, iron, paper,
“The basic idea of this dialogue is to be able to talk while suspending your opinions, holding them in front of you, while neither suppressing them nor insisting upon them. Not trying to convince, but simply to understand. This will create a new frame of mind in which there is a common consciousness. It is a kind of implicate order, where each one enfolds the whole consciousness. With the common consciousness we then have something new — a new kind of intelligence.”
David Bohm, father of quantum physics
Janjaweed (Devil Horse) 2006 – Based on the Janjaweed rebels in Sudan.
TRAVEL INFLUENCE: PLEINAIRE PAINTING
My current work is heavily influenced by travel and the current state of the world. I have had many opportunities to travel in the last ten years since my husband, Dennis Sizemore started Round River Conservation Studies about 10 years ago. Round River works on projects in Ecuador, Peru, Canada, Belize, Namibia, Botswana, and Australia. In 2003 I went to Namibia and Botswana, Africa for two months and painted outside. I made a major break through in my work and I suddenly realized I could no longer divide my time between my graphic design business and art, but that I had to do art all day, everyday. The continuity of work had brought out a new kind of creativity for me, a richer, deeper quality, as opposed to the sudden insight kind of creativity. Creativity itself became a subject of investigation for me. Many of my favorite quotes are by the quantum physicist, David Bohm,
Art is exploring fundamentally new modes of perception, through the senses, and new forms of imagination. And in so far as it does that it will be relevant to science and to spirituality.”
Damaraland, Rhino Camp, Namibia 16” x 20” mixed media on paper
On my website under ESSAYS you will find an essay called “Pleinaire Painting in Africa, which decribes my two month painting journey in Namibia and Botswana. I describe the zen like nature of seeing and recording without judgment and it being a practice for my life –to understand the nature of form and therefore the nature of reality.
Zebras and Egrets, Botswana 60” x 48” oil on canvas
The traveling part of my life has sparked an intense interest in ancient cultures and the knowledge that we’ve lost over centuries of becoming insulated in our own cultures. We have lost so much of the metaphysical and intuitive insights that were part of the Sans Bushman’s 30,000 year old presence in the Kalihari Desert, for example, or the Aboriginal people of Cape of Australia. So many people in the world understand that we are merely part of a much larger continuum and that we are indeed, not in control here.
Devils Garden, Escalante - 2005 24’ x 18” oil on panel –
owned by Sharol Bernardo, Escalante, Ut.
Repetition 35, mixed media on canvas 36” x 60”
Phillips Exhibit
REPEATING THE FORM: pattern = think = reality
My work involves an ongoing question that I ask myself. If I change my consciousness – in my own time and space, how does that effect the larger consciousness? Consciousness is pattern. So all I have to do to effect change is alter my own pattern.
Again, the Implicate Order of things, the common consciousness dialog permeates my work. In making this art, I was aware of seeing pattern and rhythm. Pattern is essential. We are pattern. Our primal survival is based on recognizing pattern. Our social evolution is woven pattern. I am intrigued with the interdependence of good and bad, compassion and greed. It is a constant ebb and flow of dichotomous forces that create pattern through repetition. Thus thoughts and actions, altruistic or fear-based, weave our existence into history. History is repetition. Art gives us the perfect forum to examine our patterns, getting them onto the canvas or integrated into the sculpture, so that they can be observed. Everyday I discover something new about myself. This way of working energizes me by allowing me to see the patterns, the repetition.
“Repetition is Spiritual”
Kiki Smith
“The less I become of what I thought I was, the more I become”
Adyashanti
Abu Ghraib
ESSAY’S: Making sense of the world.
My web site includes a few essays written about my work and my insights. I find that writing clarifies my thinking. I tend to think in elliptical patterns rather lineally, so writing helps you to communicate verbally. I don’t have a problem explaining what I think my work is about. The art process for me is about keeping open and allowing the dialogue to unfold, to emerge, rather than be anticipated.