JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Wider Than the Sky is a new exhibit featured in the Project Atrium space at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in downtown Jacksonville.
The artwork is by Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, an Atlanta-based visual artist.
ActionNewsJax.com spoke with Lathan-Stiefel during MOCA’s free admission night, when the public was invited to view her installing the exhibition.
Lathan-Stiefel met the MOCA museum director at an exhibit in North Carolina. She came to visit her brother-in-law, who has a house in Fernandina and dropped by the museum.
“I saw this Project Atrium space and I thought it was great. I sent in a proposal, and it’s been a two-year process,” she said.
“It’s very exciting, it’s a beautiful space.”
BUILDING BLOCKS TO ARTISTRY
The creation is made mostly of fabric materials: pipe cleaners, wire, thread, yarn, string fabric, and fishing weights.
“I work in textiles,” Lathan-Stiefel said. “I sew a lot of the work by hand, sometimes on a machine, and solely put it together.”
The installation takes full advantage of MOCA’s Haskel Atrium Gallery height. It’s a 40-foot-tall creation that hangs from the skylight girders to the floor. The art work can be viewed from each floor of the museum.
Lathan-Stiefel used small materials from daily life -- like cups, plants, keys, and cellphones -- right alongside embellished textile words.
MOTIVATED BY SCIENCE
“It’s a piece that is inspired by brain neurology, brain mapping,” Lathan-Stiefel’s said.
Lathan-Stiefel’s prior work has been inspired by marine and plant biology. But for Jacksonville, she decided to go in a different, scientific route.
Her father, a doctor, had encephalitis in 2012. His temporary loss of speech caused her to think about brain circuitry – how it scars and how it regrows.
Some of the embroidered words in piece, “South Carolina,” “rice,” “article,” are the first words her father spoke after his brain injury.
EFFECTS ON THE COMMUNITY
Lathan-Stiefel wants the Jacksonville community to feel enclosed in the piece.
“[I hope] that they would look up and look around and be surrounded by the work,” she said.
It would be great if, when people came to the piece, they had a sort of sense of wonder. That’s one of the things I’m looking for.”
The exhibit is open to the general public July 26 to Oct.26. For more information, visit mocajacksonville.org.
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