A Chamber of Music A Mostly Silent Installation by Diane Gilbert

 In her exhibit at Mesa Arts Center, artist Diane Gilbert has taken old guitar strings with little square textiles attached to them to create what I might describe as a beautiful gazebo of double helix DNA strands, or even a bee hive. At first I thought the space felt very empty, but I soon realized how wrong I was.

With all of her pieces are hanging from the ceiling, her pieces don’t fill the room where you feel crowded and can’t walk around. Rather, her pieces fill the room because of all the shadows they cast. She has spaces between parts of the pieces, so that pieces of her work are really two instead of one. Depending on where you walk in the exhibitions, you get to look at the shadows they cast from many different angles; every step you take you can see a new piece of her art work. She leaves space between the works so they can breathe. With all that space in the room I think it allows for what Gilbert wants to convey, and that is: there is a “visual language.”

Less is more with her art. She talks about how she wants to “evoke wonder and contemplation.” With the spaces and shadows she plays with there is definitely room for wonder and contemplation. Going back to less is more, I feel that when you see an art piece weather it be a painting, a drawing or a ceramic piece. I feel that if there is too much going on that the viewer will never look at that piece of art in a way that may evoke an emotion in them. If there is too much going on you just write it off as an interesting piece. With the work of Diane Gilbert’s, when there is so much empty space I feel like it lets the wheels in your head start to turn and you begin to connect the dots from piece to piece with all that extra space she has laid out.

I began to wonder why use guitar strings. I mean why not use some yarn so you could add color to it.  Then I read what she was going for with using the guitar strings and thought: “Wow that is awesome”. She said that using the guitar strings is like having “frozen music”. By taking guitar strings from different artist she meets and incorporating them into her art it is like she has a frozen in time guitar marching band. I suggest when walking through her exhibit that you think of all the guitar players out there. Think of all the songs that are played on their guitars and let your imagination bring that exhibit to life.

By Samuel Childress