February 5-27, 2016

The Essential Visible

“…on ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.”
It is only with the heart that one can truly see – for what is essential is invisible to the eye.
-Antoine de Saint Exupery

This installation represents three years of making. The apparent exuberance of some of the work belies the painstaking, slow process that has been at the heart of it. The success is that I kept moving forward no matter what, feeling my way in the forest, in the dark, only recently finding the light and the pathway here.

The imagery from nature is used to explore the human condition. It is based in the observation of nature, its life cycles, and the visceral responses that humans make every effort to control. Is man a part of nature or an aberration of it?

Autobiography seeps into the work including the legacy of violence that permeates American history. That trauma ripples into the present and the future; the slaughter of the native people, slavery, war, the unbridled use of natural resources, to almost any American city’s streets.

The kinesthetic, call-and-response making process, that includes: clay, welded steel, cast bronze, fiber, and printmaking employs color through the use of acrylic, oil, enamel and chemical patina. All of the formal aesthetic decision-making is in play as the work seeks to meld form, color, and concept.

A native Washingtonian, and first and second generation American, Fall inherited family stories of World War II and the Holocaust. Her early childhood was spent in Paris, France (her father was French) and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The 1960s and 70s were writ large for Fall as her father was killed when he stepped on a landmine in Vietnam in 1967 where he researched and wrote about the Vietnam War. They attended peace marches and other political rallies as a childhood pastime. All of this informs her work.

Fall has been an educator for most of the past 30 years, and has taught in a variety of settings in Baltimore, Maryland.
Selected specifics: BFA Maryland Institute College of Art, MFA Towson University. Teaching: Associate Professor; Baltimore City Community College, Teacher of sculpture; Carver Center for Arts and Technology, Community Arts Programs Director; Baltimore Clayworks, Adjunct; MICA. Grants: Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship 1992, Phi Beta Kappa Foundation 1990, MidAtlantic Arts Foundation residency at the Clay Studio 2002 , Philadelphia, Pa. Representation by the former Gallery K, Washington DC (1990-2003, several one person shows),Groups shows: Makere University, Kampala Uganda ( 2010), Hanoi College of Fine Arts (2000).