Megan Caldwell Chandler

This week I have an interesting (horrifying?) story to share about a recent art show my brother and I entered. 

Last month my brother Travis and I had our collaborative work Cacoethes accepted into the Whitewater Valley Annual Art Competition, which is put together by the Indiana University East art department located in Richmond, Indiana.  I really like entering work into this competition because it always provides a top notch artist who comes in and critiques the work and makes the final selections for the show.

(Here is our piece that was selected.  You can click here to view my original blog post about this work.)

Travis and I were excited to have our piece selected for the show, and so we decided to attend the opening reception.  We were joined by our former high school art teacher (and now great friend!) Susan Scott.  As I walked past the main gallery, I was surprised to see our work seemingly floating out of the wall.  I was surprised because I couldn’t imagine how the gallery was able to hang the work against the wall without a shelf. 

When Travis first looked at the piece, I could see apprehension in his eyes.  It turns out he had ample reason to be concerned because when we got up close and looked under the box, we were horrified to see a screw drilled through a wall bracket and into the bottom of our box!  The gallery literally altered our art work.  Never in a million years would I have thought that I needed to tell the gallery ahead of time, “Hey, please don’t add to, alter, change, or otherwise violate my art in any way.  Okay?  Thanks!”

TOTAL INSANITY.

Susan suggested I say something to the gallery director that very night, but I was at a loss for words, so I decided to email him the next day.  Since this gallery is associated with a college, I figured some dumb student decided to drill my piece, but it turns out, the gallery director himself made the decision to violate the art.  I guess his reasoning was that Travis and I would think the display was so cool that we wouldn’t care about the hole in our box.  Wrong-o!  And here’s the other thing: the display itself, while cool-looking, adds another dimension to the work that was not intended.  Travis and I meant for this piece to be seen in the round.  It was meant to be seen from all angles, and it seems strange to me that a director of an art gallery would not understand this. 

Although Travis and I are reasonably pissed, we are also able to laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing.  Cacoethes was made as a sort of shrine to all things OCD, and now with the addition of the unwanted hole, our obsessions and compulsions will forever be triggered when we see this piece.  FIX THE HOLE.  FIX THE HOLE.  FIX THE HOLE.  Or as Travis would say, “OCD 1, 2, 3.  OCD 1, 2, 3.  OCD 1, 2, 3.”