(Above: One of Amanda Martin Wilcox’s paintings in Despondent, a show at the Maude Kerns Art Center, examining the discomfort caused by the negative aspects of social media and disinformation)

By Randi Bjornstad

There are many synonyms for despondence — doldrums, melancholy, the blues, dejection, depression, downheartedness, misery, gloom, sadness — but the feeling is one that nearly everyone alive probably has experienced at one time or another.

Now, a group of six artists has opened a show titled Despondent at the Maude Kerns Art Center, each plumbing the depths of the emotion in her own way, through art that ranges from mixed-media prints and paintings to fiber installations and photograms.

All six of the artists earned their master’s of fine arts degrees from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, yet each has a unique perspective on the topic, as follows:

  • Judith Hochman presents 13 abstract mixed-media prints, called “hides,” as in things that are hidden. Her pieces begin with monotype prints that she paints and draws on with ink, charcoal, and conté crayon. Hochman’s inspiration came from The Hide by British author and Booker Prizewinner Barry Unsworth, in which a character digs a series of tunnels he calls “the hides” underground on an English estate with the purpose of spying on people. Hochman focuses on this concept of concealment, “using the device of voyeurism and the form of various ‘hides’ to explore the nature of seeing and the moral or ethical dimension of perception.”

 

  • Kumja Lee, originally from Seoul, Korea, now lives in Eugene. Her part of the exhibit includes a large-scale, floor-to-ceiling fiber installation that encompasses lines and shadows with subtle gradations of color and combines elements of time and feeling that include both Eastern and Western cultural influences. Lee explains her approach by saying, “The progression of time embraces all human emotions that pass through it, even the state of being despondent.”

 

  • M.V. Moran’s pieces examine the sometimes dispiriting aspects of aging. They take the form of three large mixed-media drawings of women, each dressed in a 1950s-style swimsuit. She calls these works Disheartened, Discouraged, and Dispirited. Her work in the show also includes a series of paintings that represent feelings of modern-day hopelessness among humankind.

 

  • Alanna Risse drew on her own experience with illness, pain, and depression in creating a series of darkly rich water images and through this work was better able to accept her situation and work through it instead of fighting it. She describes the process as “a meditation on letting go and embracing the feeling of drowning in order to overcome it.”

 

  • Rhonda Vanover is on the photography faculty at Ithaca College and has created art using a vintage panoramic camera and exposed on film as one continuous image. She examines death rituals by photographing mass burial sites in places like the Magnolia Plantation in South Carolina where slaves were tortured and buried.

 

  • Amanda Martin Wilcox turns her art to the despondence inherent in “the divisive discomfort of our times, in the form of four paintings . One, titled Invasive Flowers, depicts what she calls “the acrid effects of social messaging” and the spread of misinformation in politics.

 

Kumja Lee’s floor-to-ceiling fiber installation depicts gradations of human emotions

 

“Despondent” at the Maude Kerns Art Center

When: Through March 20; an artists’ talk will take place from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 14

Where: Maude Kerns Art Center, 1910 E. 15th Ave., Eugene

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday; noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays during exhibits

Information: 541-345-1571 or mkartcenter.org