Text from the program booklet...
Group Show at the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art
"New Growth", Linda Lighton & Mark Southerland
5500 West 123rd Street, Overland Park, KS 66209. www.kcjmca.org
"New Growth"
March 18 - April 29, 2012
In all cultures, flowers are given symbolic significance, whether in the context of religion and spirituality, popular culture and decoration, or for medicinal and therapeutic properties. From ancient cultural references that linked flowers to deities in Greek Mythology to the height of expression in the Victorian era when flowers were given broader meaning to express a range of emotions, a complex language of floral symbolism has developed that continues to influence life's rituals.
Accompanying Goldberg's solo presentation Fragile Moments is the intimate group exhibition New Growth with Kansas City-based artists Linda Lighten and musician, performer and artist Mark Southerland, as well as Wichita-based artist Ann Resnick.
In New Growth, Linda Lighten and Mark Southerland reveal, for the first time, a series of collaborative sculptures that meld together Lighton's iconic ceramic flowers with Southerland's signature musical instrument sculptures. Rifting on each artist's forms, materials and content, Lighten and Southerland dance a duet of shared visual language, alternating recumbent and sinuous form punctuated by flaring blossoms.
For this collaboration, Lighten invited Southerland into her studio to select elements from her recent body of work, Luminous, a series of translucent, hanging Fuchsia flower sculptures that, when lit internally by LED lights, were a poignant metaphor for life's force and fragility. In Southerland's hands, these elements embellish and adorn deft assemblages of altered musical horns and metallic fronds and slivers, echoing organic nature while hitting visual notes both raucous and sensual. In these collaborations, Lighton's metaphor for life's fading light is supplanted by her love of music and all things seductive and playful, while Southerland's approach is an open-ended and improvisational style of construction that is not unlike his best musical creations.