by Lonnie Broadvalley
Artist Natalie Dotzsauer’s installation titled, ‘What We Take’ is an invitation to reconsider nostalgia. Segments of houses, a fence, and an oversized, sugar-studded quilt have been constructed for our senses in the MAC Gallery on the WVC campus. While the pieces in this exhibit have personal significance for Natalie, she invites our senses to infuse this experience with our own memories. She is interested in nostalgia because it is something we can never obtain but are always searching for - visiting but not entirely returning to. When you enter the gallery you might notice the huge house in the middle of the room. Well it’s a roof peak, technically, sticking up like the prow of a sinking ship. The siding is painted bright blue after an abandoned farmhouse that used to stand outside of Quincy. Natalie says that its interior looked like an entire family just up and left, leaving the materials of a life behind. Maybe what was left led her to wonder what was taken? One day she drove by and the house was gone. Deserted places like this are goldmines for the imagination, especially if you happen to be an artist using found objects in your work. But objects just sit there, reflecting back whatever associations we have with them… until they are gathered and reconstructed to reflect something of their own. In this exhibit, Natalie is inviting us to climb on the roof, run the stick along the fence and look under the skin of an old house. The beauty of an art installation is that we get to be part of it. The artist has created something that considers our physical presence to be an essential element of the piece. One of the first people to see her show was an older gentleman who immediately climbed to the peak of the roof like the king of the mountain. And I’m sure more than one person has licked that quilt on the sly, reliving the thrill of stealing sweets when no one was looking. When you add the thwack thwack thwack thwack of running a stick along the fence, your part in this exhibit is becoming integral. Memories may be stirring. Most of us reconstruct a slightly different past each time we bring a memory back to the surface, kind of like playing telephone with yourself. It’s pretty humbling to think that our recall can be so subjective. One thing we can usually rely on for more specific detail is our sense of smell. Natalie draws on this ability by infusing her sugar quilt with the scent of vanilla. Turns out, sugar doesn’t really smell but vanilla is in so many sweets that the scent brings to mind everything from grandma’s cookies to ice cream to the candy store on the corner. Not only do I get layers of food memory from the scent of this piece but I feel that sneaky urge to pluck a sugar dot & eat it and… oh…is that?… yes, yes it’s another feeling coming in… it’s the pull of a quiet room and a soft bed covered with a handmade quilt. Hmmm, I like this game. I like thinking about a time when life was less complicated, running around with a gang of kids all jacked up on sugar, looking for adventure. But that’s just my memory of childhood - I bet, at the time, it WAS complicated and I NEVER had enough sugar and I was bored as hell.