BURLINGTON: Parade - A Collaboration by Riki Moss and Janet Van Fleet

PARADE: A Collaborative Installation

On Exhibit at the Living/Learning Gallery at UVM 

January 13 - February 7, 2013

Gallery Reception and Artist Talk, Thursday, January 23, 5:30 PM

More information

See the Parade! Vermont sculptors Janet Van Fleet and Riki Moss are exhibiting  work exploring the motif of Parade  in the Living/Learning Gallery at the University of Vermont from January 13 - February 7, 2014, with an opening reception on Thursday, January 23 at 5:30 PM.

Both artists use natural, found and/or  recycled materials to create human, animal, and hybrid creatures, presenting these figures in ways that suggest migration through time and space. The exhibit offers Moss and Van Fleet the opportunity to mingle and integrate their work in new ways to expand on ideas about species loss, resource sharing, extinction, ethnicity, and the big questions of life and death.  Riki Moss says, “I’m thinking about life forms looping through time, like on a conveyer belt, gently rearranging.  Stop the frame and there we are, meeting the gaze of the viewer, the person who wants to know, and raising the question, 'so what is it we’re supposed to be doing with our time spent together on this strange green planet? '"

Riki Moss's process uses abaca paper and other plant materials to create hybrid or chimerical creatures with tremendous energy and movement, while Van Fleet's wood and found object figures are more rigid and self-contained. "The installation is like a dance party, with each of my wooden creatures finding a paper partner with which it connected, often in wonderfully evocative pairings that suggest play, dance, love, and solidarity," says Van Fleet.

The sculptors first worked together in 2010, creating and mounting work for the On the Planet exhibition in Nagoya, Japan in conjunction with UN Conference on Biodiversity (COP10) and in 2012 in Mutual Gaze, one of the exhibits in the 2012 Winooski Pop-Up Gallery District. More recently they each mounted work from their Parade series in June, 2013 in an exhibit organized by Vermont 350.org in Montpelier.

The Living/Learning Center Gallery is open Monday - Friday  from 1:00- 8:30 pm and Saturdays 12:30 - 4:30. It is located in the Living/Learning Commons Building right by the Fireplace Lounge. Parking is across Main Street in the UVM Jeffords parking lot (free after 3:30 PM. Use the pedestrian crossing signal at Main Street/University Heights. For more information, contact Joan Watson, Joan.Watson@uvm.edu , (802) 656-4150.