Mary Early

First Outside Art Event/Talk

Mary Early was raised in Washington D.C. and graduated from Bennington College in 1997. She primarily works in Sculpture using beeswax and resin in her work. Her pieces generally seem to have a uniform, repetitious quality about them, but their slight imperfections created by the handmade process add character and beauty to her work.
One of the things that I found interesting about this artist is that she takes in account for many different aspects of her audience's experience. Early pays attention to the space, the smells, the reflections, and the architecture surrounding her setups. It was interesting to see how she maximized the space available to her to create pieces that are simple, yet demand attention.
Something that I noticed about a lot her sculptures was that they seemed to be deeply rooted in math. Many displayed various types of symmetry, radial was especially prominent. Also, Early frequently talked about creating the illusion that the lines of the sculpture just continue off into space. This idea of infinity and the cone and cylindrical shapes reminded me a lot of calculus. Everything seemed uniform and carefully plotted, similar to mathematics.
Another point in her talk that I found intriguing was that she said artist have a certain romance with their materials. She described her fixation with beeswax in this manner. I found this interesting because while romance seems too strong of a description for how I personally feel about my art supplies, there definitely is some type of friendship. Some days I will discover something new about my materials, like a pleasant surprise from a friend, and other days there is this frustration that I cannot get across what I envisioned with the material. As I experiment with the materials, it changes me sometimes more that I end up changing it. The paints allow me to view something in a manner I never saw before and they teach me about themselves. They are like a good friend, there to correct you, yet also there to help you get you to your ultimate goal.