Touching Grass: Reimagining the Commons
Serena Viola Corson
LSU School of Art MFA Thesis Exhibition
April 18-April 25
Walking into Glassel Gallery last week, one saw green. Green walls, green willowing trees, green plants, the green in so many paintings.
Serena Viola Corson transformed the industrial looking Glassel Gallery into an ecofeminist paradise for her MFA thesis exhibition. The exhibit mostly featured paintings with two notable exceptions: an altar of books dedicated to her research and a table which was the site of a relational aesthetics performance in which Corson invited friends in for a potluck-style gathering.
The table, titled “The Art of Hosting is The Highest Form of Art (titled after Tom Moriani’s The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art, 1970-1979),” is a symbol of the real art we can’t see.
“... the work locates art not in a fixed object but in the relationships, exchanges, and ephemeral experience created at the table,” Corson wrote in a panel on the wall. “This work honors forms of labor often dismissed as feminine: hosting, floral arrangement, emotional presence and the careful creation of atmosphere.”
The table is a relic of what was and a memorial to the work that was done to bring it together. One wishes they could see the place settings, the food that was served and the the other parts of those gatherings, but maybe that’s the point.
In “Touching Grass,” Corson brings the outside in, but more than that, she reimagines what the outside can be: trees painted over a pink sky, topless women picnicking and picking flowers, animals and humans coexisting without fear. It feels all the romanization of the lives of nymphs of Greek mythology met actual women’s bodies. Corson’s paintings feature tummy rolls and curves, boobs unencumbered by bras and free bleeding.
It’s a radical statement that in her reimagining and careful world building, the small annoyances of being a woman aren’t elided. They’re put front and center. Utopia isn’t built by perfect people with conventionally aesthetic bodies, she seems to be saying. Utopia is in us and through our relationships. The exhibit was temporary, only up for a week, but the feelings it evokes stay with you.
Maybe it inspires one to touch grass, but maybe it just inspires a phone call to a friend one hasn’t seen in a while.
