What do doll limbs, rusty nails, dried paint tubes, and old fuses have in common? In the hands of artist Susan Appleton Chapin, they become uncanny relics of our disposable world.
Her exhibition at the Emerald Art Center is titled Thirty-Three for Thirty-Nine—featuring thirty-three mixed-media assemblages, priced at just thirty-nine dollars each. Chapin insists on complete accessibility, inviting visitors to take these rescued objects home.
Steeped in Dadaism, Chapin refuses pristine materials, leaning into wabi-sabi—locating meaning in the broken and overlooked. Chapin engages in radical, subversive collage: a three-dimensional cabinet of curiosities built entirely from cultural cast-offs.
Consider “There Are As Yet Few Who Feel It As You and I Do.” Chapin starts with a sentimental thrift-store painting of a young girl cradling a doll. But Chapin punctures that domestic nostalgia by lashing a dismembered plastic doll body to the canvas, its severed head dangling below on a string.
The collision between pristine sentiment and physical rupture is startling and thought-provoking.
Nearby in a piece titled “Enid,” a tiny electronic figure made of wire mesh, ceramic fuses, and resistors stands atop vintage Scrabble tiles spelling "ENID," set against a cityscape photograph. It reads like a watchful sentinel of our technological footprint.
In another piece titled “23 Dec. 1985,” a cluster of nails erupts from red Jello on film, echoing the ready-mades of Man Ray. Each construction acts as an open-ended puzzle, daring us to find order within modern debris.
Meet the artist at the opening reception this Friday, September 11th, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. during the Downtown Springfield Second Friday Art Walk.
