Annex Energy
Title: The Spirituality of the Loss
Medium: Steel sheet, steel round bar, steel pipe
Dimensions: Dimensions variable upon installation
Description: The Spirituality of the Loss examines my religious experience with nature. I am no longer a religious person. Yet having grown up in a small rural town in the forested Rocky Mountains, I have always felt a creeping, longing connection to trees. The only spirituality I now believe in is an unnamed binding force between all humans and all nature. Having lived in a large concrete city for fourteen years where trees are scarce, I still feel an inner force that yearns for nature. The steel trees that I create represent this yearning and perhaps even a kind of loss—a loss to physical relocation, a loss to Capitalism, a loss to climate change. The trees are a dichotomy between a cold manufactured death, and organic forms and desires. Shaped to imitate the unpredictability and three-dimensionality of tree branches, the round steel bars which they are made from are barren and sterilized. The act of cutting down is immortalized by the base plates, which utilize aesthetic qualities to perversely accentuate their point of severance. I have used figural representation to conjure deathly beings into space; a metaphor for the death of my own religious faith and its replacement with nothingness. This is reflected in the title of the work, referencing The Spirituality of the Cross: The Way of the First Evangelicals by Gene Edward Veith Jr. My trees obstruct one’s path through space, forcing interaction with emotional and physical realities which are too often ignored. These are the ghosts of nature.
Special Thanks to Stevie Spurgin and Lucy Carranza for helping me finish grinding and welding after I injured my hand.
Photo Credit: Marie Williams
Poster Design by Michelle Vo
Title: Annex Energy
Location: SITE Gallery, Houston, TX
Dates: May – August 2021
Curator: Michelle Matthews
Participating Artists: Jen Barker, Daniel Calderon, Noelle Dunahoe, Marley Foster, Nicolas Herrera, Randi Long, Jacinta Majithia, Blaize Marshall, Cat Martinez, Michelle Matthews, Tiffany Nesbit, Cheyenne Nevins, Katie Patzke, Brenna Rogers, Gustavo Solorzano, Stevie Spurgin, William VB, Jimena Vilchis, Michelle Vo, Debbie Vu, Marie Williams and Erick Zambrano
Catalog Contributors: Marie Williams (photographer and catalog creator) & Ashley DeHoyos (introduction writer)
Annex Energy is a tribute to the resilience of the University of Houston Sculpture program during the time of COVID.
For the past three semesters, UH sculpture artists have been forced to work in virtual isolation. Yet they have persevered through a difficult year of cancelled exhibitions, limited studio access and online-only classes. Despite the lack of real-world interactions, the sculpture artists have survived by sharing their creative energy and supporting each other through the bonds of a common pursuit. That is, pursuing artwork that excels despite and because of the struggles of the times–be it Covid, societal expectations, economic hardships, and beyond.
The SITE Gallery exhibition will provide a window into the COVID experience. The beehive cluster of circular rooms–each uniquely transformed–will together convey the energy and vitality of the Sculpture Program. Originating at the Lawndale Annex, then the South Park Annex, and now at the newly constructed Elgin Street Studios facility, the UH Sculpture program continues to be a spark plug for new ideas as well as a launchpad for the next generation of Houston artists.
The ideas presented in this exhibition range from those addressing racial generational trauma, physical metaphors for human transitions through changes in environment, to intergenerational domestic representation and expression, and beyond. These artists explore the personal; the power of language; and the historical, modern, and cultural perceptions of camouflage. Their inspirations stem from Houston’s sounds of the bayou, the capitalization of water as a natural resource, experiential exploration, and the connections and contrasts between internal and external reflection. They traverse the difficult grounds of spiritual loss and longing, the thanklessness and often futility of labor, and lost South American ancestral knowledge.
These disparate practices and approaches, reflective of Houston’s richly diverse community, are unified by a common situation in the city. These artists offer their collective of work and perspectives, a year after the world turned upside down, as a way to redefine what art and art-making look like moving into an uncertain future. Bound together by place, each installation in the SITE Gallery acts as a window into the work happening now, and the work that could be. This is Houston art.
Paul Kittelson
