Listening Eye, 2021
Clay, soil, glue, paper, burlap, reed grass, hemp
Journey, 2021
Reed grass and hemp thread
Charmaine Spencer
From: Seed
To: Root
On view January 21 – March 5, 2022
Euclid Gallery
Following her participation in The Sculpture Center’s widely celebrated summer 2021 exhibition Crossroads: Still We Rise, Ms. Spencer was selected as a “Spotlight Artist” and has created a series of new works deepening her investigation of ancestral spirit vessels. In Crossroads: Still We Rise, her site specific work Listening Eye was based on African Spirit vessels made by women seeking guidance and healing from their ancestors. During the exhibition, Ms. Spencer asked visitors to submit written thoughts of family and ancestry. The writings from the community of over 60 individuals will be incorporated in a new work featured in this exhibition.
Exhibition Statement
This exhibition was conceptualized from the highly anthropomorphized African Spirit or Ancestor vessels. These vessels, primarily made by women, use the expressive characteristics of the elements. The material and its process are symbolic of the cycle of life and the worlds of human and spirit, earth, water, air and fire.
These works serve various ritual functions including, an axis for prayer or meditation, joining ceremonies, healing the sick, safeguarding the community, activating ancestral wisdom and the presence of various protective spirits. Their positive intervention was considered vital to maintaining harmony, health and well-being.
The exhibition title From: Seed To: Root refers to the cyclical relationship between us and our ancestors, we give, we listen, we learn, we do. They heal, they guide, they nourish, and we grow.
Artist Statement
Exploring social conditioning and how it defines our concepts of value and our sense of place, and how it shapes our individual development are the consistent conceptual subjects that help define my work. The sculptures’ physical forms favor natural and utilitarian materials, which I shape through traditional and contemporary construction methods. This visually contrasts the valued or “prized” against the discarded, while distinguishing its place.
The totality of my work represents the struggles and growth as one reconstructs his or her self-worth and social place. The materials symbolize identity being stripped, cut or broken, then reformed, woven, bound or slotted back together. The work’s new “self” is formed, creating bold sculptures and installations that adapt, acculturating new environments and states of being.
Artist Bio
Charmaine Spencer is artist, owner and curator of Studio 302 in Cleveland’s 78th Street Studios. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, Charmaine has exhibited at the Artist Archives of the Western Reserve, the Sculpture Center, Cleveland State University Gallery, Spaces, and the Maltz Museum, among others. She is the award recipient of the 2020 Ohio Arts Council ADAP Grant and the 2018 CAN Triennial Prize. She was one of two students selected to finish posthumously, the last sculpture of the Sculpture Center’s founder, David E. Davis.
Visit Charmaine Spencer’s website.
