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Assiduous Adaptation, Shelley Therese Caldwell

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Growing up in a rural environment, you both witness the wonders of the natural world and learn to be resourceful with what you already have. This lesson has had a profound impact on my work as an installation artist whose practice combines mixed media drawing with subjects from nature and daily life. Drawing spider plant (chlorophytum comosum) silhouettes upon legal pad pages then displaying them alongside actual plants—each accumulated to near absurdity—exemplifies the creative impulse behind the work; combining familiar items and imagery into large-scale installations transforms the space they inhabit as well as their ordinary meaning into something extraordinary. …