A Story of Art
Jill Rennicke, Alumni Coordinator

Artist Statement by: Nyika Campbell Sprung, Metal, LED lights, earth

Sprung compliments and expands on the theme of my ceramic project, the unsettling side of nature. This piece examines the darker side of the natural world by taking something often thought of as hopeful and comforting, seedlings, and abstracting them into something sinister. Writer Annie Dillard wrote "the world is actual and fringed, pierced here and there, and through and through, with the toothed conditions of time and the mysterious, coiled spring of death." Few things evoke this coiled spring of death as well as pine seedlings. When they first germinate and push out of the earth seedlings form small curled baskets taught with life and potential energy. Then they spring open becoming part of the ephemeral biological world. Is the natural world elegant and designed, or is it random, brutal and chaotic?