Andrew Connelly's All Exaltations: Meditations in Sculpture




January 22 through February 9th, The Else Gallery held the show All Exaltations: Meditations in Sculpture, featuring the works of Sacramento State's sculpture professor, Andrew Connelly. More than a simple display of sculptural work, this show was an interactive experience.


It was dark inside the room, but full of illumination. Shadows cast by the elevated bells move up and down the walls along with the colorful glowing symbols that shine atop them. It felt like stepping into an artist's silhouette drawing of a city at night. Each bell sits atop a metal frame work, shaped to evoke the image of significant buildings that create the cityscapes of the United States. Weaving around the buildings of the little city presents you with an invitation to interact- a simple wood and cloth mallet hangs from each tower, each a little moment of tenderness in an exhibit of mostly heavy metals and bright lights.

Still uncertain, I asked if I was supposed to hit the bell. It wasn't every day I came across an exhibit that allowed touching, let alone hitting the art with a mallet. But these were bells and hitting them was part of the art, I was assured. I gave the bell a timid tap to no avail, then hit harder, and a clear tone rang out in the room, unobtrusive but hard to ignore. A little excited, I moved from bell to bell, letting myself be drawn by the glow of the symbols, and let the tone ring out.


I returned to the exhibit a few times to better absorb the feelings and imagery. My second time, I had a lot more questions. I noticed how the symbols grouped together- some attached on their towers, some near to each other but not attached, and others sitting alone. Even after a rough explanation of what each symbol represented- things like Buddhism, the Four Corners, even marijuana- I couldn't reach any conclusions about the relationships of these things. Perhaps it was this way on purpose, to provoke the contemplation of what these things mean to the individual. Perhaps it just created a lovely visual rhythm, which it did.


However, I also noticed the way that the lights that created the projections inevitably crossed the room and created ghosts of the symbols in unexpected places. Thinking of the quantity of the symbols, some familiar and others strange, this seemed to reveal that none of these ideas exist in a bubble. With the diversity of the United States, the alternative ideas mingling around us are unavoidable. When thinking about how these things relate to politics and religion and how we're supposed to make these things work together in a globalizing world, the future feels uncertain.

But the sound of the bell rings out the same from each tower, perhaps to clear all of these thoughts and reach a peace with this.

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