THE PENDULUM

Senior digital art major Travis Butler describes his artistic vision in one word — "experimental."

His work with animal bones, found objects, felt masks and mythical creatures gives the sense of a constructed reality never before explored.

Butler has spent the past three months creating and collecting pieces for the installation he will present for his senior art seminar in the spring. A mixed-media artist, Butler sketches, paints and works with fiber and digital programs. Through fiber art, fiber installation and digital imagery, Butler said he ultimately hopes to achieve a detached reality in his installation.

"My installation work uses the material of felt and found rusty, recycled and discarded objects to create an environment that seems weathered and frozen in time but soft like the wasteland of a forgotten dream," Butler said.

In the senior art seminar, students are expected to spend their senior year working on one project. They build a concept, work with faculty and other students, show their work and finally present and defend a thesis at the end of the year. Butler entered his fourth year already knowing what he wanted to produce.

"This past summer, I took a course at (Virginia Commonwealth University) where I learned different fiber techniques like felting," Butler said. "I made two of the masks there."

These masks are perhaps the most noticeable elements in Butler's installation. Unique in form and emotional expression, Butler makes the eyes and mouth for the masks separately with a basic fiber technique called coiling. The emotions and faces of the masks — which each take about seven to eight hours to create — emerge as the form is finalized and composed. Butler said he plans to create a community of about 10 masked figures.

"I think these anthropomorphic figures are the most recognizable because they could be related to humans or cute, cuddly creatures," Butler said. "A connection is made between viewer and masked figure because both possess a spirit."

This sense of spirituality, fantasy and mysticism surrounds all of Butler's work, especially his sketches. In the installation, Butler takes this theme further, highlighting the soul and unknown history of the felt figures and the found objects that embellish them.

"The found objects contain a certain personality and history to them," Butler said. "They can all be found on the sides of railroad tracks. But when seen in the context of the gallery, they take on new, fantastic lives. I like to think that when everyone leaves the building for the night, the figures let out a breath of air. Shadowy figures spring to life from their relaxed positions, and the silence of the white walls is broken."

Butler said he hopes the setting and layout of his artwork will express an openness that emphasizes detachment, adventure, desire and discovery. Butler guides the viewer to experience the installation first as a removed participant, then to search for the adventure and alternate reality.
He said he leaves it to the imagination of the viewers, based on the material he has presented, to create their own stories, myths or histories.

As a contemporary artist, Butler does not want to control viewers. Instead, he presents his work and challenges them to appreciate it more than they may have appreciated other artwork — by literally becoming the art.

"To fully experience life, you can't be stuck in the same routines," Butler said. "You have to be adventurous and continually see things in new ways. In life, we are presented with questions. Should we keep doing what we are comfortable doing, or should we try new ways of thinking?"

Butler said he does not expect or want everyone to walk away from his work with the same understanding. Rather,  he said he hopes they will experience the installation at different levels but ultimately grasp the larger themes of different levels of framing, searching and constructed space.

"Every adventure has a starting point," Butler said. "In many ways, this installation piece is my starting point. I hope I can guide viewers to find their own adventures by sharing mine."