Resonantia

Guest blog post by Jack Davis Most regard plastic wrap as a generic kitchen staple, the no-frills safeguard for leftovers. But to North Carolina-based artist Cayce Lee, it’s less a food cover, more an alternative - and just as essential -  fibre to craft with. Yes, Lee dares to crochet in the unwieldiest of plastics, eschewing traditional balls of yarn for industrial reams of the transparent sheeting. For her most recent installation, she crafted numerous columns and a chandelier out of the material, creating a three-dimensional fabric strong enough to support the antique glassware couched into the design elements. This installation, Resonantia, brought many visitors to the Cary Arts Center for a surprisingly introspective experience. Inside the space, one initially couldn’t help but examine the suspensions as sculptures, resisting the urge to touch the unfamiliar fabric. But after moving from one hanging to another, the dimensionality of the room as more than a collective began to reveal itself. Thus presenting a marvel twofold to viewers: below the physical constructions themselves lay the shadows they cast, multilayered and intricate. Light-dappled and occasionally prismatic, they echoed the suspensions in a manner perhaps more compelling than the design elements themselves. While in this sense Lee technically justifies the unconventional material, it bears a rich symbolism: much as plastic wrap can preserve last night’s dinner, Resonantia served as a preservative of time. Though a manufactured space, the installation evoked stirrings of curious familiarity—a grandmother’s tablecloth, the long shadows of walks in the dusk. It is these moments of intimate recollection that made the space itself a happening worth the memory. www.cayceleestudio.com