Artist-in-Residence Shares Sculpture, Skills with Groton Community

Artist Fred Liang, this year’s Mudge Fellow, has captured the light and space of Groton’s Sackett Forum with a delicate and joyful paper sculpture.

 

The intricate work, painstakingly cut by hand, hangs from the ceiling at the west end of the Forum. Liang immediately saw unique potential in the open space at the center of the Schoolhouse. “It’s the light, it’s tremendous,” he said. “The cavernous space could hold a large installation that would capture the air and space.”

 

Liang—also a printmaker and painter—worked with students through the Mudge Fellowship during the week of January 13, installing the paper sculpture during the prior week. During classes, Liang demonstrated the art and science of printmaking to Groton students, who then drew their own prints and manually ran them through the school printing press. Liang's prints are on display throughout the term in the Brodigan Gallery. 

 

On January 15, Liang presented an artist’s talk about his work, speaking just below the gold paper sculpture. Liang spent his first twelve years in China and did papercutting, known there as jiǎnzhǐ—“something that everybody does.” He returned to that art form in 2008. 

 

The Groton sculpture, about 20-by-20 feet, was cut by hand with an X-Acto knife. “It’s a very meditative process of cutting one sheet at a time,” he said. The Schoolhouse piece is far from his largest; that was a paper installation, at the Milwaukee Art Museum, measuring about 140-by-60 feet.

 

Liang integrated natural light and, inspired by Picasso’s light drawings, also added LED lights to the Groton artwork. The artist manipulates light and air along with the paper. “The paper will reflect light and wrap the space around it,” he said. “Even though the installation looks large, there’s a lot of air in the installation. Internal light acts as a linear line that travels through it.”

 

Various design elements, he explained, are based on organic objects in nature. “Nature provides us with more interesting forms than what I can come up with,” he said. “Nature is a better resource than what’s in my head.”

 

Liang said he hopes the installation in the Schoolhouse Forum makes people stop and think. “I hope what they get out of it is a pause, to rethink the relationship between themselves and their surroundings,” he said. “I think too often we’re tethered to a virtual world and we don’t actually spend time to observe this space and light that nature provides to us. It takes something that breaks that normality that makes us look a little bit harder."

The Mudge Fellowship, created by the Mudge family in 1992, brings an artist-in-residence to campus each year. See photos from Fred Liang's residency at Groton.