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Photo by Casey Kocher, ’24
Delanie Markle, a senior majoring in English Adolescence Education B.A./M.A., modeling an apple yoke, a wearable sculpture made of apple, padauk, sycamore and sterling silver, in 2022. In this case, the apple yoke and yew gems are explorations of wearable forms made primarily from found materials. The yew came from a dead shrub in Peter Tucker’s yard, the apple from a friend’s downed tree. The scale of the pieces and the wearable forms encourage intimate exploration of the materials and their inherent beauty.
Associate Professor Peter Tucker of the Department of Visual Arts and New Media at the State University of New York at Fredonia has received a Creative Impact Fund award to support his artistic endeavors.
Funding is made possible through Arts Services Inc.’s Creative Impact Fund, thanks to a New York State Senate Initiative supported by the NYS Legislature and the Office of the Governor, and administered by the New York State Council on the Arts.
Over the next year, Tucker will be creating a new body of work and making connections. At its heart, the project is about exploring ways to bring meaning to objects. It is also about making connections. Making connections within the community, connecting people to the land, and helping connect everyone to places through materials that have been witness to hundreds of years of its history.
“This project is important to me to grow as an artist,” Tucker explained. “I hope that it will be important to my community and to the environment, and I know that it will be important to further artistic scholarship in the field of what German artist Joseph Beuys called ‘Social Sculpture,” which in contemporary terms would be referred to as Relational Aesthetics or Social Practice work.
A New York Times article states that the aim of Social Practice work “is to bring about heightened awareness of societal, cultural, ecological or political issues that are of immediate concern to that community.”
“It is through that holistic approach to art making that I find meaning and joy,” Tucker said.
