random art

"What is the secret of life? I had a friend." Aldwyth

So said the artist in one of her works, "Corpus", a nine-part collection of odd bits. A huge collection of her collections is currently on display at the Jepson Center For The Arts. There are even videos of her handling her works on YouTube, should you care to take a gander. As one art expert, Mark Sloan, Director of the College of Charleston, says of her, "She is a voracious reader and inveterate collector of detritus."
And "detritus" is certainly the operative word. Much of her material has a history to it and has been collected from unusual places and unusual times. For example, one display is titled "A Walk In The Woods" and includes tiny bits of branches. The exhibit also has three works composed of the remnants of Hurricane Hugo's mark on Charleston, with the bits collected within days of the horrific event.
Horrific is an apt term for her works. In addition to the physical bits and pieces of nature and man-made items, there were also fashioned (or re-purposed) bits: misshapen torsos, eyes, eyeballs, arms and legs and hands. I found the resultant creations quite disturbing, with their tangible undercurrents of dementia, fear, violence, bedlam. I found myself unable to view all of the works shown because of the unease they evoked. I don't know when I've ever had such a reaction to art.