Sarah Kabot, an artist who was featured on Bravo’s “Work of Art,” spoke of her work as a way to change the viewer’s perception of a space completely.
A crowd of about 40 attended Kabot’s lecture as part of the Penn State School of Visual Arts John M. Anderson Lecture Series at 2:45 p.m. Tuesday in the Palmer Lipcon Auditorium at the Palmer Museum of Art.
Kabot said she mostly works with paper, producing intricate pieces in which she has “excavated delicate information.”
Kabot said the paper works are “time consuming in construction, but could be recycled.”
The paper works are based on the “impermanancy I was seeing in the world.”
Kabot said she works on a tiny object that seems secondary or dismissable to incorporate into a large installation.
She created a large installation in which she moved every line in a bathroom a half inch to make a line drawing a of space on top of a space. During construction on the gallery space, Kabot was told to create an installation in the bathroom.
“Legions of helpers helped me touch it all,” Kabot said.
After this installation, Kabot said she made a “revelation” of her work.
With a background in fibers and ceramics, Kabot said she creates works to “totalize the vision for the viewer.”
Kabot said she has been told that viewers “feel high or have a psychotic break” because of the doubling or mirroring of her works.
Kabot mirrored the space in a gallery and replicated the objects that made the space nonfunctional, she said. She said she flipped the objects upside down to make the space more dysfunctional.
She could not exactly mirror objects because of the “clumsiness of the weight of the line” so there was an inability to perfectly replicate or mirror a form, she said.
Kabot said she began to expect or anticipate the outcomes of her work, so she decided to join the second season cast of “Work of Art.”
The experience was relatively “extraordinary” and it was good to see the mutual support of other artists, she said.
After the show, Kabot said she gives herself permission to screw around with things more and remix her work.
Shannon Goff, assistant professor of art, said the School of Visual Arts was fortunate to have Kabot speak at the school.
Goff said she ran into Kabot in a “wonderfully random way” in Cleveland after attending undergraduate school together, and wanted to bring her to Penn State.
Cassie Berringer (graduate-art) said Kabot was really helpful because the lecture made her think about her own work and how she can alter the work to make it more “encompassing and more of an experience for the viewer.”
