Student Life Coordinator and Tyler alum Kari Scott has been awarded fourth place for her piece Shrine to my Scale in the show “radius250” hosted by artspace.
“radius250 2013” is the fifth installment of artspace’s signature juried exhibition which represents artists that create their work within 250 miles of Richmond, Virginia. The exhibition is biennial at artspace, a non-profit member-run gallery.
127 artists submitted over 450 individual submissions to be juried for the show. Of these submissions, 48 pieces were selected from 36 artists.
“This is a pretty widely-known exhibition in a town I used to live in, so I knew I would run into people I knew if I got in. It’s always nice to go back to a place you left with a triumph,” Scott said. “And Erin M. Riley, a Tyler alum who graduated from my same department the year before me won Best of Show four years ago at the 2009 ‘radius250.’ I knew if I was in this show, I would be in good company.”
Scott submitted three pieces to be judged for the exhibition. Two of the pieces submitted, Shrine to St. Betty and Shrine to my Scale, had to be installed by Scott herself.
“Shrine to my Scale is a piece that I considered too personal to submit for a long time, but I’ve started to have a better appreciation of it as it relates to the themes I’m interested in. I created it when I was really trying to keep weight off, and I lost the struggle not long after I created it, but health issues have crept up and I’m realizing more and more that it’s a life-long struggle for me, and I need to keep at it,” Scott said.
“As I’ve been actively submitting my work to galleries and shows, I’ve become more and more aware that my work is mostly understood by a narrow audience of middle-aged women, my demographic, who have struggled with their own issues of body image/weight issues/struggle to maintain a healthy diet while busy/attempting to resist both subtle and overt attempts by the food industry to subvert our diets because they make money both by having us eat too much junk food and by dieting,” Scott said.
With these issues in mind, Shrine to my Scale was created on a whim with materials that Scott found sitting around in her studio.
“I use muffin tins because chocolate cupcakes are one of my trigger foods, and I need extra help from the weight goddesses to resist those. And originally, the candles were chocolate scented, but in group shows, like this one, I use unscented candles because I want to be a good artist-neighbor. If it was just a show of my work, though, they would be chocolate scented, because I want viewers to experience some of my struggle,” Scott said.
Both Shrine to my Scale and Shrine to St. Betty were chosen by juror N. Elizabeth Schlatter, deputy director and curator of exhibitions at the University of Richmond Museums, to appear in the show.
“It’s always validating to the struggle to be an artist who’s only able to work in the studio part-time to have your work selected for major shows like this one,” Scott said. “I’ve learned that curators/jurors go into something like these shows and develop a theme–even if it wasn’t stated–and your work might just not fit into that theme for that show, so don’t lose faith.”
The exhibition will be in all galleries of artspace until August 18th. For more details, visit http://artspacegallery.org/
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