ASA SAWA, REFLECTIONS ON GHANA: NEW EXHIBITION OPENING AT DELTA STATE UNIVERSITY’S WRIGHT ART CENTER GALLERY The Wright Art Center Gallery at Delta State University opens the new year with an exhibition of Chris Martin’s Asa Sawa, Reflections on Ghana. The exhibition opens on Thursday, January 22 with a public reception from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. Chris Martin is a sculptor and furniture designer based in Ames, Iowa. The work in Asa Sawa, Reflections on Ghana was inspired by Martin’s while serving with the U.S. Peace Corp in Ghana from 2008 to 2010. Martin , as he put it, “found Ghana to be a country of fantastic cultural diversity, ecological diversity, environmental diversity, and diverse ways of thinking. It is a country filled with beautiful people and great potential. It is also a country of great paradoxes and serious contradictions.” The work in the exhibition reflects the diversity of the country in the range of designs. Martin here draws on African crafts traditions and pays homage to the artisans he met in Ghana, but he also critically reflects on the country’s tumultuous history as well as the new perspective he has gained on his own culture through his immersion into a different environment. As Martin explains: “I have come to realize that the issues that exasperated me in Ghana are all too similar to the issues that annoy and challenge me here in U.S. Take corruption for example; as Americans, we tend to see corruption as a Third World issue, yet around the entire world the rich are getting richer and the poor remain poor at best. The only difference I see now is that the issues of the developing world rest on the surface while in the developed world they have been camouflaged.” Martin earned a MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He currently is head of the wood design area at Iowa State University’s College of Design where he had completed his undergraduate studies. His work has been shown nationally and received numerous awards and recognitions for his work. While at Delta State University, Martin will conduct a wood working workshop for students. For more information on the workshop contact DSU’s sculpture professor Michael Stanley at [email protected]. Martin will give a public lecture on his work and experience as U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana on Friday, January 23, from 12:15–1:15 p.m. in the Wright Art Center Gallery on the DSU campus. Asa Sawa, Reflections on Ghana will be on view until February 27. The gallery is open Monday-Thursday from 8 a.m.-8:30 p.m. and on Friday from 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m. For more information, please contact the Art Department at 662-846-4720.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 05:43:33 +0000
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