Photos by Kylee McDaniel
Last Friday’s gallery opening at Wilson Gallery which featured Morgan Binkerd’s collection “Vessel” sparked enlightening conversations and thoughts among the audience who finally experienced her journey through her unique artworks. Along with the paintings was a table full of delicious snacks to satiate the hungry minds gathered in the room.
What makes the experience of appreciating the visual arts are the details and various perspectives one can discover from just looking at one piece. From a distance, the audience notices the contrast between darkness and light in paintings such as “The Morning is Itself” and “Arcana”. A story emerges from the colors and textures that were spontaneously brought together by Binkerd.
As one walks closer to the pieces, they begin to notice the carvings and layers breaking the two dimensionality of the paintings. The interweaving of poetry and words begin to show, as seen in Binkerd’s “Like a Riverbed, Like Roots, Like Veins, Like a Forgotten Incantation I’ll Spend My Whole Life Trying to Remember”.
Seeds, bark, and ash become visible by standing as close as possible to the paintings, tracing everything that was collected in order to bring the world into the art. Nature itself hides within Binkerd’s poetry art, waiting for the audience to spot them as seen in her piece “I Keep A Bended Knee In These Waters”.
To experience this journey first-hand, the “Vessel” collection will continue to run in Wilson Gallery until Friday, March 13.