Charles McQuillen
Charles McQuillen
Workspace Program Resident 1993
“I began consciously sculpting when I served as a volunteer teacher in a native boarding school in the Alaskan bush. As an art teacher with little experience I looked to my Yupik and Inuit students and the village elders for guidance. I taught/learned direct carving techniques in stone, antler, and ivory. I continued to work directly in wood and stone when I returned to the lower 48. In time I developed a constructivist approach to sculpture while still working with materials from the immediate environment. Currently my works are site-specific environmental installations that integrate the materials at hand with natural processes to highlight the characteristic features and/or history of a place. “ — Charles McQuillen
The more than casual kinship between modern chemistry, alchemy, and magic is subject of Charles McQuillen’s natural action pantings. McQuillen saturated paper pulp with PH indicator solution. He then exposed his handmade litmus paper to environmental acids: snow, ice, and rain. Where McQuillen’s site-specfic artwork endure only as photographs of installations, his handmade papers are both the object and the subject: in the case of “Drizzle,” a report on invisible forces at work in the natural world.
About the Artist
Charles McQuillen received a BA from College of the Holy Cross and a MFA from Tufts University/School of the Museum of the Arts in 1993. Charles also holds a MEd from the University of Vermont.
For more information, please visit their website: https://charlesmcquillen.com/