ABAIR: Arts Benicia Artist In Residency Project

On July 20th, we kicked off the ABAIR project at Arts Benicia, welcoming artists John Ruszel and Alex Potts to create site specific installations in the gallery. The artists have 4 weeks to work out their ideas in the space, a substantial length of time that is rather unusual.

The contemporary art form of site specific installation  gives artists the opportunity to seize the totality of a given space. Just as painters use color, line, and shapes to create art on a canvas, installation artists create art within the space of a gallery. In this way, they create an environment in which the visitor not just views art, but is immersed in it.

Both Ruszel and Potts have created works of this nature in the past.

John Ruszel, Ring, 2010

A recent graduate from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Ruszel uses materials such as muslin, string, and wood to create tension sculptures.  Ruszel states that “with this installation, I plan to expand my explorations of physical forces such as gravity and tension to include the more subtle and subjective relationships between separate structures – the ways that components need not touch to interact, and the ways that parts can form a whole. hopefully, these structures will press people to move beyond the regular viewer/artwork mindset and experience the work more intimately.”

Alex Potts, Resonance, 2008

Potts, who holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Degree from San Francisco State University, is a sound sculptor who works with gourds. He  places speakers in each of the dozens of gourds hanging in his installations and uses them to amplify ambient sound. The gourds are arranged in the space to create sweeping shapes that transform it visually as well as sonically.