meaningful places

Meaningful Places is a thesis exhibition of prints by thirty 5th and 6th grade artists from Willow Field Elementary School, alongside their Art teacher Danielle Ruggiero. Students carved relief prints of a place that is important to them. Each print reveals a place where students hold meaningful memories and personal connections. Alongside each relief is an abstract collagraph print that contains imagery representative of the artist’s chosen place. Danielle Ruggiero represents her meaningful place through a printmaking, ceramic, and reclaimed barn wood installation that comments on the permanence and impermanence of these places that we cherish.

Impermanence

Barn wood, newsprint, unfired terracotta, water

Permanence

Wood fired, press molded stoneware

Barn Photographs

Opening Reception

Collaborative collagraph prints

Student work

Barnes and Noble

6th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

My Kitchen

5th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

My brother's house

5th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

game room

5th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

The Art Room

6th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

My Bedroom

6th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

Papa's house

6th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

Washington Monument

6th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

My Camp

5th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

My bedroom

5th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

Willow Field Elementary

6th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

My Aunt's Farm

5th grade student | Relief and collagraph print with artist statement

Process Room

Relief carvings

Process Room

Collagraphs

Process Room

Plaster barn wood molds

Process Room

Plaster barn wood molds

artist statement

Growing up in rural upstate New York I enjoyed seeking out a landscape that was often overlooked and under appreciated. Driving a few miles from my childhood home was scenery of decaying barns. For the past ten years of my artistic career I have been fixated on these barns and finding the beauty in their decay. Society is drawn to a specific standard of beauty and rejects anything that lies outside of this definition. My interests lie outside of this standard and I have explored alternative means of beauty through ceramics and mixed media installation. This installation comments on the permanence and impermanence of the places that we cherish. As I appreciate the landscape of my hometown and hold memories with me, the physical nature of these barns are wearing away. Each time I drive through my hometown I see more evidence of decay or the tearing down of a barn all together. As this familiar landscape slowly disappears, I attempt to preserve its history through the ceramic installation of press molded barn wood. Ceramics is one of the most permanent materials one can work with, and although these pieces of wood no longer exist in their original, they will forever exist in their wood fired form. The interior of the gallery represents the impermanence of these structures through the use of newsprint paper, wood, and unfired terracotta. These materials will fade away over time, whether it be years or minutes. Through this installation I want to acknowledge the history of my hometown but also embrace the inevitable transience of landscapes over time.