Elements of the Cosmos: Grant Recipient Asia Scudder

Guest Author: Laura Reese, OVAC Intern

Asia Scudder, ”Escape from Eden” Baling Wire. 2001.

Asia Scudder is an Oklahoma City artist who transforms baling wire from merely a heavy duty material into delicate lines by which her works become otherworldly.

Scudder was inspired by her grandfather, a sculptor of regional-fame, to create “artistic representations of [her] own personal life experience.” Her work brings in aspects of storytelling with, as she described, “quantum timelessness”, through her simultaneous investigations of early cultures, such as the Mayans, as well as her expression of human emotion.

“I work to involve elements of the cosmos”, said Scudder. The combination of the mysterious early cultures of our world as well as the deep search for meaning and compassion she employs create an ethereal experience.

Asia Scudder, ”Creation” Baling Wire. 2008.

She hopes her works help create a “new vocabulary” with which one can “reach for compassion and agreeableness” when it comes to conflict based on our own human errors. Her work Escape from Eden uses gestural lines of the wire to create a tumbling motion; the subject has fallen out of Eden, out of the “cultural mythology of marital bliss” that Scudder implies in the title, and challenges the viewer to draw upon various sources, transcending the zeitgeist, to evaluate the parables she creates in her work

Scudder’s more recent work has moved from delicate wires to heavier materials, such as water-jet-cut steel, such as the work Compassion, to make her works sturdier and more complex. She was recently selected for a Creative Projects Grant from the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, to give her the means to transform several of her wire pieces into steel for an upcoming show at the Leslie Powell Gallery, opening July 7, 2012.

You can see her work at the exhibit Mayan Icons in Wire during the month of February at Istvan Gallery in Oklahoma City.