Artist William Ransom featured speaker today at SCA Salons at the Strand

Feb. 15—PLATTSBURGH — Vermont-based artist William Ransom is the featured speaker at 6:30 p.m. today at the Strand Center for the Art's monthly Salon Series: Salons at the Strand.

Ransom has three sculptures in the group exhibition, "Eloquent Visions: Honoring the Rich Tapestry of Black Artistry," which also features works by Joel Tineo, Thomas Jerard Greene, Elizabeth Marques, Dee Wolfe, Takeyce Walter and Winosha Steele, curator.

The diverse mediums includes painting, sculpture, 2D work, and mixed media, and the show runs through March 23.

ARTIST SALON

"I'm going to give a little bit of background about myself and my practice and then I was going to mostly focus on the work that's currently up at the Strand," Ransom said.

"I have three pieces in the show, and they kind of are from different lineages in my studio practice, but they have some commonalities."

The biggest piece, a floor piece, is titled "Failure Cascade."

"That piece is made out of wood and a clamp," he said.

"So, the whole thing is held together by a clamp and that came out of a sort of happy accident that happened in the studio one day where I was using a clamp to try to straighten some pieces of wood and when I flipped it around on the table, it stood up. It was only able to stand up because of the presence of the clamp and the tension of the clamp."

That sent Ransom down a path, which centered on clamps as an integral element.

"Holding the whole thing together that could be taken apart just as easily as it can be put together," he said.

"I sort of likened it to being able to undo time or to be able to freeze something in time and then relive a moment over and over again, but the moment is never quite the same. That piece is kind of about the unifying element of the clamp being able to provide the stability to make this otherwise very fragile thing have enough structure to be able to stand."

"Failure Cascade" is very contained on one side and very loose and free on the other side.

"Often these pieces have this sort of dichotomy built into them with tension and rigidity and control and then also kind of release and freedom," he said.

The second work, "Beacon," also uses a clamp for stability.

"Again the clamp is sort of suggesting this tenuousness of its grip. That it can be undone as easily as it was done. What this one is holding together is it is supporting a flagpole that has the American flag hanging from it. But the American flag is in the shape of a bindle bag, like a hobo bag, and inside of that is a light. So there is light shining from within the bindle bag," he said.

Ransom flew the flag outside of his home on 9/11/2001.

"I put up a pole out in the pasture in front of my house and I hung the flag up there for months until it was essentially in tatters from the weather," he said.

"It was up most of that winter after Sept. 11. and so it's this worn, weathered, stained, beaten flag that I sewed up into the shape of this bindle using gold thread. and the gold thread is sort of meant to draw attention to that repair and the care of that repair."

"Beacon" references the idea of America being the shiny city on the hill.

"This signal being sent out to immigrants of the world that we are a welcoming place, which we all know not to be entirely true," he said.

"It's like the quote at the bottom of Statue of Liberty, bring me your wretched and weary masses or whatever it is. That piece came about in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection when the rioters were using flagpoles as weapons with the American flag beating the police officers and counter-protesters."

Ransom's flagpole has a spear tip, which is kind of threatening and ominous.

"But it also contains all these other layers of the actual material of the flag that I used and its relationship to 9/11, which is sort of the last time that our country felt unified. Then, the light shining from within, and the repair to the flag, and all of that," he said.

"Wildfire," carved in Italian marble, is Ransom's homage to Edmonia Lewis, a Black American sculptor working in the late 1800s.

"Who found more freedom to do what she wanted to do carving stone in Italy than she could here in the U.S." he said.

"She went over there as an expatriate to learn this new material and this new craft. I place myself in that same lineage of Black American artists going abroad, specifically to Italy, to learn to carve stone.

"So the form that my sculpture took is borrowed from one of Edmonia Lewis's most iconic sculptures, which is a depiction of the death of Queen Cleopatra. It's my interpretation of the headdress that Cleopatra is wearing in Edmonia Lewis's depiction of her."

Ransom spent an amazing and fulfilling month in Italy last summer.

"The guy who started the program, Jon Isherwood, he was my sculptor professor when I was an undergrad at Bennington College and he'd been trying to get me over there for a couple of years and this year it worked out," he said.

"I went."

There were about 20 international artists, who participated in the program.

"There were people from India, China, all across the U.S., Eastern Europe, the UK. There were a few Italians there. It was great," he said.

It was there Ransom created "Wildfire," a nod to Edmonia Lewis's childhood nickname.

"She was, I guess, a little unruly."

Ransom doesn't think he's ever not been a sculptor.

"My life has been an ongoing developmental relationship with material," he said.

"I grew up on a farm here in Vermont, so there was a daily imperative to learn and understand the tools and materials that I was engaged with.

"My experience with working materials on the farm was more often than not with an eye towards utility. I always found myself kind of drifting away from that and trying to figure out ways to have it be something more, something beyond just that."

Email: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com

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