by Leah Lewis
Photo by Leah Lewis
Willow’s new visual arts teacher, Brett Reif, shared with the school his own art series in the CAVE Gallery. This series featured 3D tiles making twists and turns on canvases or around themselves. With this, Reif manufactured unique designs while simultaneously constructing a whole new genre of art, leaving viewers blown away.
The kinks, as they are called, are fluffy looking, while the tiles are hard. This fiddles with the audience’s familiarity with tiles and how they would expect shapes to look and feel in space–in this case, tiles bending. This is what gives each piece its uniqueness, something that most artists should strive for.
“One piece that sticks out in my memory was a large yellow blob,” Kyle Sirman, visual arts teacher, said. “I liked the use of the tile material on a rounded 3D surface because you usually see tile installed on flat surfaces.”
Reif has always used uncommon materials in artworks. However, when collaborating with a composer in 2008 on a project in which the two focused on the subject of domesticity, he became curious and inspired to use other materials that he had not used before. He then began to produce work with tiles like the ones seen in the CAVE Gallery.
“I started to explore like, what if? What if I just isolated those, and you know what would happen?” Reif continues, “And that really set me off on a journey for, I guess about a decade or so, which is still ongoing.”
Many people may wonder what the real aim of artists is when they create art. Questions like how art should make you feel, and what is the message behind the art, are always circulating through artists’ brains as they give the audience a piece of their world and thoughts.
Reif was able to challenge viewers’ preconceived ideas about tile. How do you successfully think of delivering your ideas abnormally while still being able to convey those ideas in a way others can understand?
Seeing everything as “potential beauty,” Reif is capable of creating these themes “by taking ordinary things that we surround ourselves with everyday and trying to turn them into something extraordinary.”
To Reif, good art is something that is universal–something that anyone should be able to understand. It allows for artists to bring up a vast variety of topics and world issues. It can even be a form of celebration. This invites the audience into a discussion, which generates even more art and community understanding.
“Art is to connect humanity. To teach humanity truths. To make humanity better. Words can connect you to people, but they are not as effective,” Reif says. “Visual art then steps up. That’s where I think art has a great purpose to say deeper things. The harder things that words perhaps can’t.”
