The music of the natural world made visible

By Bonnie Wells
Staff Writer

Published on February 29, 2008

THERE'S an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to the latest exhibit of sculpture at the Fiber Art Center in Amherst.

Entering the gallery a viewer gets the sense of having sipped the potion that makes you smaller and eaten the cake that makes you larger by turns. One pedestal supports what looks like a giant slice of a citrus fruit, another a canoe for Liliputians with a tree growing through it. And in a "Little Shop of Horrors" twist, one piece resembles an enormous carnivorous pitcher plant with lethal-looking spines and a surprise inside.

"Pulp Poetry," an exhibit of sculptural works created of steel, handmade paper and organic found objects by Falmouth fiber artist Joyce Utting Schutter, is on view at the gallery through March 29. But think haiku rather than "The Song of Hiawatha." The collection on view celebrates nature with a minimalist elegance.

The artist will be on hand for a reception March 6, from 5 to 8 p.m. during the Amherst Art Walk, and will give a slide show and talk about her work at 7:30 p.m.

"My inspiration is from nature," said Schutter, who grew up in Guilford on five acres of wooded land that became her playground, and made of the stuff of nature a lifelong love. "A lot of the reason I make the work I do is that I'm so inspired by the beauty around us."

Still, but for happenstance the Fiber Art Center pedestals might be supporting a roomful of bronze figures. Schutter's first love was bronze casting, which she studied at Boston University and the Insituto Allende in Mexico. She continued the study while earning her B.F.A. at the University of Iowa.

"I loved it," she said. "I wanted to do it forever."

But just as she was finishing up her bachelor's and moving on to her M.F.A. at Iowa, the university foundry was shut down due to safety concerns. "So I had to think of something else to do," she said. In welding and paper-making classes she discovered media that ignited her passion again, and developed the unique method of sculpture that she uses today.

"My original process," she writes in an artist statement, "combines a steel armature with an interwoven fiber substrate, many layers of sprayed or hand-applied pulp and embedded found objects."

In "The Lure of Shade," for example, the canoe with the tree growing through it, the gnarled and spidery tree roots extending underneath the vessel are created of both real lilac roots and ones made of steel. The branches of the tree are formed by one large chrysanthemum plant, topped with 800 tiny leaves constructed of handmade paper onto which Schutter photocopied the words to poems from her favorite childhood poetry book.

She conceived the piece as a cautionary tale. "Picture yourself in a canoe on a sunny day and it's really hot," Schutter said, adding that the shade of a tree at the river's edge looks so inviting that you might just want to stay there, but there's an inherent danger.

"It's allegorical for what happens in our lives if we get to comfortable and we don't risk anymore," she said. "There's a risk of getting complacent," stuck in a job that you really don't like, say. "There are lives that don't reach their full potential because of that," she said.

Each of the astonishing and beautiful works in the show is richly layered with both materials and personal and metaphorical meaning, but the last thing Schutter wants is for a viewer to focus on analysis. In her artist statement she says that each piece is "not a puzzle to be solved or a message to be deciphered, but a breath to be inhaled."

"I really think that artwork needs to work on the gut level," she said, "that it communicates without words.

"When you see something magnificent - like a sunset, or a beautiful leaf or creature, or a beautiful person or great music - it transports you in a way that bypasses that cognitive part of your brain and speaks to you on a different level. And that's universal, so no matter what language you speak, you can still be moved by it.

"I'm hoping for some of that."

"Pulp Poetry" is on view at the Fiber Art Center at 79 So. Pleasant St. in Amherst through March 29. Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For more information, call the center at 256-1818, or visit the Web site www.fiberartcenter.com.