New York Artist Dawn Clements to Speak at Carleton College
In conjunction with the Art Gallery’s current exhibit “Modernizing Melodrama,” Carleton College will present New York-based artist Dawn Clements on Thursday, Feb. 12 at 4:30 p.m. in Boliou Hall, room 104. In a lecture entitled “Drawn into Melodrama,” Clements will speak about her passion for film melodramas and how she engages with these cinematic works through her own art pieces. The lecture is free and open to the public.
“Modernizing Melodrama” explores the history and significance of this popular genre of American storytelling and Clements’ own work is included in the exhibit. Her 205-inch long ballpoint pen drawing was created in response to the 1952 film melodrama Sudden Fear starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance. The film is a story of betrayal: Crawford, a successful playwright, marries Palance, an actor who plots with his previous girlfriend to kill her. Tension rises when the Crawford character discovers Palance’s murderous scheme. Clements’ drawing refers to the actors in the drama through small sketches in the margins. She focuses particularly on the bedrooms of the two characters as spaces of dangerously intimate betrayal; each bedroom is drawn from details pulled from the film itself.
Carol Donelan, professor of cinema and media studies and a co-curator of “Moderning Melodrama,” says: “I'm excited to bring artist Dawn Clements to campus because her ‘extended drawings’ are fascinating in their own right, as brilliantly rendered large-scale representations. Dawn's drawings are very cinematic—not just because they focus on films, but because I sense that she is using the medium of pen and ink with a cinematic consciousness. After studying Dawn's work ‘Sudden Fear,’ I'm inspired to pay more attention to how character is expressed through setting. Let's hear it for the under-acknowledged role of the set decorator. I'm also prompted to think again about how the cinematic frame both defines and limits our ability to see the reality onscreen, given that Dawn's drawings refuse to be contained within the limits of a single piece of paper.”
Clements lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and has recently had solo exhibits at Pierogi gallery in Brooklyn and the Feigen Contemporary gallery in New York City. Group exhibitions include “In Door Out” at ACME Gallery in Los Angeles (2004); “The Drawn Page” at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn. (2004); “Score! Action Drawing” at White Columns in New York City; “Open House: Working in Brooklyn” at the Brooklyn Museum (2004); “Explaining Magic” at the Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn (2003); and “Some Panoramas” at the Pump House Gallery in London (2003).
Clements received her MFA from the University at Albany, State University of New York in 1989.
text-autospace:none"> text-autospace:none">“Modernizing Melodrama” will be on exhibit through March 11, 2009. The Carleton College Art Gallery is located near First and Winona Streets in Northfield, in the lower level of the Music and Drama Center on the Carleton College campus. The gallery is open Monday through Wednesday, noon to 6 p.m.; Thursday and Friday, noon to 10 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. For more information on the exhibit, the lectures, or for disability accommodations, call the Carleton Art Gallery at (507) 222-4342 or visit www.carleton.edu/campus/gallery.
For more information on this event, including disability accommodations, call Director of Exhibitions Laurel Bradley at (507) 222-4342.
