Fuller Craft Museum Presents "Icarus": An Installation By Mark Davis

Written by Joyce Carpenter Sunday, 20 November 2011 21:06

BROCKTON, MA.- Fuller Craft Museum, New England’s home for contemporary craft, presents Icarus, an installation by Mark Davis, on display through March 15, 2012, created specifically for Fuller Craft’s Courtyard Gallery.

The mobiles of Mark Davis are poetic abstractions of color and form, brought to life by the subtle and graceful movement of the constituent parts. The soft, organic shapes are carefully layered in a unique language of gestures, the brass or aluminum elements painted with quiet modulations of color or a bright burst of gold leaf. At Fuller Craft Museum, Davis has translated the fall of Icarus into a large-scale mobile installation.

In the mythology of ancient Greece, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, the master craftsman imprisoned for aiding Theseus solve the labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur contained within. To escape, Daedalus fashioned wings of feathers and wax for himself and Icarus, warning not to fly too close to the sun lest the wax melt and the wings fail.

Icarus famously paid little heed to his father’s caution, and his fall to his death in the sea became a common tale on the perils of hubris. In the hands of Davis, the fall of Icarus is captured in time, his wings slowly deteriorating from the heat of the sun yet still aloft, caught in the liminal moment that separates the beauty of flight from the terror of free fall.

Mark Davis was born in New Haven, CT in 1954. He attended Goddard College in Plainfield, VT and worked initially as a jeweler, specializing in sterling silver and brass. From 1988-1995 he was commissioned twice a year to do mobiles and sculptures for window displays at Tiffany's on 5th Avenue, Madison Avenue, and SOHO in New York. He has continued making mobiles and sculptures since that time.

Mark Davis is an American sculptor who took his artistic inspiration from Alexander Calder. Davis' highly imaginative, unique and colorful mobiles are graceful abstract "balancing acts" that can be ceiling or wall mounted as well as placed on a table or pedestal. Davis' work is playful and joyful and ever changing.

Fuller Craft Museum, New England's home for contemporary craft, touches the lives of thousands of children and adults each year. Thanks to you, our vision to "let the art touch you" is changing lives, redefining the museum experience and ensuring the future of contemporary craft.

Visit : http://www.fullercraft.org/home.html

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