Carnage Garden & Others

Samantha Parker Salazar

 
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Samantha Parker Salazar’s work is formidable. Predominately installations, her pieces consume entire rooms with their sweeping, rolling forms. To add to the awe of these installations, these large sculptural pieces are primarily created by the painstaking process of cutting and shaping paper. Salazar’s work is undeniable other-worldly. It harkens to the dramatic landscapes often depicted in distant planets and other worlds, but Salazar’s work also carries a personal, emotional force, outside of detail and scale.

These sculptures convey a gestalt of feeling—in looming blacks, expanding whites, burning reds, and quiet blues. These compositions of color and light wash the viewer with an undeniable sense of intimacy. This is aided by the open, lacey quietness these openings allow, as the intangibility of light and shadow permeate through and across the vulnerable surface of the paper. As these compositions whirl up the walls and ceilings, viewers are permitted to sink deeper into these forms, while also to experience their ferocity of size.

Salazar’s most recent work, including the piece “Carnage Garden,” has been informed by a recently discovered family history and current political atmosphere. You can read more about her American Renegade show at Illinois Central College.

 

Samantha Parker Salazar creates site-specific paper installations and mixed media works on paper. She received an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2014 and a BFA from Bradley University in 2011. Salazar is based in Columbus, Ohio, and is currently a Studio Instructor at the Dayton Art Institute.