Artist’s cups carry deeper meaning

 

By K. Michelle Moran

Arts & Entertainment Editor

     Most commentators struggled to convey the terrible scope of the 2004 Asian tsunami and last year’s Hurricane Katrina in words.

     But Naomi Falk is hoping to communicate those tragedies through her art. Her installation, “Swallow(ed),” honors the memory of those lost and the strength of the survivors, and can be seen through March 21 at the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts Gallery in Clinton Township.

     When visitors enter, they are surrounded by tiers of white, palm-sized porcelain bowls filled with saltwater, which she said simultaneously references the ocean and tears.

     The exhibit, Falk said, is about “how so many people were lost or missing or taken away by the ocean. The cups kind of represent each individual person.”

     Her choice of porcelain for the cups is no accident. She said making the material thin stands for fragility, while porcelain itself is a very strong material.

     “Hopefully, there’s some hope that we can pick ourselves up and carry on,” Falk said.

     Falk is also a performance artist whose sculpture often finds its way into that work.

     A Rochester native who graduated from Rochester High School, Falk returned to Michigan a couple of years ago after working and studying here and abroad. The Michigan State University graduate was a resident artist in Schwäbisch Hall, Germany, in 2002, and earned a master’s of fine arts in sculpture and performance art from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 2003. She recently moved to Chesterfield Township, is a lab aide and adjunct instructor at Macomb Community College, and teaches at the famed Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan.

     The Macomb Center exhibition marks the first time “Swallow(ed)” has been shown. Falk said she’d like to sell pieces of it in the future to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. She hopes her tribute to nature’s victims makes an impression on audiences.

     “I just hope, even if they don’t fully understand everything I was thinking when I made it … that they can stop and think for a second,” she said.

     The Macomb Center for the Performing Arts Gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday, and is located on the Macomb Community College Center Campus at 44575 Garfield Road (at Hall) in Clinton Township. Admission is free. For weekend hours or more information, call (586) 286-2141.

     You can reach K. Michelle Moran at kmoran@candgnews.com