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The Arts, Visual Arts
Former art school student Scoon to discuss new book
Paige Coopersteinon July 31, 2013 /Comments closed
Benjamin Hoste | Staff Photographer
Paige Cooperstein
Amber Scoon was a student at Chautauqua Institution's School of Art in 1999. She returns to Chautauqua to discuss her first book, which came out in May. Scoon dedicated the book to Don Kimes, artistic director of Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution, for introducing her to the world of contemporary art and to art as an academic study. She also studied with Kimes while earning her master's at American University.
A special guest in VACI's Visual Arts Lecture Series, Scoon will speak at 4 p.m. today in Strohl Art Center. She previously spoke this season at the opening reception for "Looking Forward Looking Back," an exhibition of student work, which opened at Fowler-Kellogg Art Center in June and closed earlier this month.
During her lecture, Scoon plans to share her theory of art as an uncertain act, which she explores in her book, Quantum Art. When she was training as a landscape painter and drawer in the 1990s, art education was very regimented, Scoon said. Artists had to explain exactly what they were doing in their work and what it meant, which she thought felt antithetical to the spirit of art.
"Quantum physics inspires me," Scoon said, "because we moved from Newtonian physics, where everything in the world is easily explainable, to this mind-blowing chaos of quantum theory, where you never know exactly where all the particles are."
Scoon, who serves as an assistant professor of art at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, said she's excited about the idea that artists don't really know what art is, what they're doing with it or what's even possible to do with it. She thinks of art as an infinite question, which perhaps explains her transition from landscape artist to mixed-media artist. Her latest artistic obsession is making paper by hand; she has also learned to cast iron.
"It seems like every project I do," Scoon said, "I learn about a new material. Whatever material I can learn about, I use."
Scoon's work has been influenced by her travels: She spent four years living in Italy and one year living in the Ukraine. She draws on what she calls the "nameless," meaning things she's experienced but can't explain in words. Although Scoon won't have slides of her work to show at her lecture, she will discuss how her artistic process aligns with the theory of art she describes in her book.
"It's a history and philosophy of art dating back to the ancient Greeks," Scoon said. "It ends with contemporary art and the question of what we're actually doing when we make art."
Tagged: Amber Scoon art Chautauqua Don Kimes mixed-media Paige Cooperstein physics Quantum Art school of art Strohl Art Center student theory VACI Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution visual arts lecture series
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About Chautauqua Institution
Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. Over the course of nine weeks, more than 100,000 visitors participate in programs, classes and community events for all ages — all within the beautiful setting of a historic lakeside village. Learn more →