BSU Artist creates to engage

On Tuesday, Nov. 9 Boise State artist, Melody Eisler shared with the campus her sculpture: "A Portal to Social Change." Her piece was displayed at Women's Center in front of the ramp leading up to the entrance. The sculpture will be displayed around town at the entrances of various organizations Eisler has been a part of, which include: The Snake River Alliance, Agency for New Americans, and United Visions of Idaho. Its final stop will be Nov. 20 at the Steward Gallery for the Boise Weekly Cover Auction. There it will be auctioned off with all proceeds benefiting YMCA Art Programs.

"A Portal to Social Change" is made from welded steel, fiberglass, and glitter. It is a portal, literally wide and tall enough to walk through. Eisler created "A Portal to Social Change" in an effort to engage people with art, causing them go beyond the usual glance- and-walk-by response. In her artist's statement, Eisler mentioned that it has "a mystical quality." It seems other worldly, perhaps.

"I see a portal being a kind of a metaphor for entrance into where we should be going in our future so it's kind of representing the future in a sense and I'm saying that these organizations are a key to our future; these non-profit, nongovernmental agencies, alternative media, as well as various art organizations in the community."

Eisler carries strong convictions of the role of the artist in society. "I feel that artists at this point and time should be more socially engaged. We have a visual knowledge that we can impart to society and use because art has the ability to communicate, to be a spectacle, to draw people to it; and so I think that artists should really think of themselves more as cultural workers or public who transgress the boundaries of the gallery and museum system. Those are important institutions but I think that we need to transgress those boundaries and bring the work into the public sphere in a way that is meaningful for the public and also work on educative kind of out reach."

To find out more about Eisler and her work, check out her blog at www.posthumanism.blogspot.com.

Jana Hoffman
Culture Writer

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