President (2010-2012) Greg Reuter
Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi
Art Dept.
6300 Ocean Drive
Corpus Christi, TX 78412
361-825-2315
cell: 361-779-1300 gregory.reuter@tamucc.edu
Please send your news, articles, digital photographs (jpeg. or gif. files), corrections, or suggestions regarding this website to:
TASA Webmaster
Victoria Taylor-Gore
Assistant Professor
Visual Arts Department
Amarillo College
P.O. Box 447
Amarillo, TX 79178
806-371-5982 vtg60@msn.com or vtaylorgore@actx.edu
AT LAMAR UNIVERSITY IN BEAUMONT ON APRIL 11 - 12, 2008
The conference theme was "Crossing Boundaries." The conference co-chairs were Kurt Dyrhaug and Xenia Fedorchenko
of Lamar University. Check back for the complete report on the 2008 TASA Annual Conference in Beaumont.
2008 Paul Hanna Lecturer: Mari Omori, "Crossing Boundaries"
Beaumont’s 2008 TASA Annual Conference featured Mari Omori as the Paul Hanna Lecturer, and her presentation was “Crossing Boundaries”. Mari Omori is a Professor of Art at Kingswood College in Kingswood, Texas. Omori describes herself as a “Japan born visual artist working in multimedia since 1997.
Omori has said: “I examine the boundaries between private and public domains through installation, and how my cultural identity plays a key role in processing information, ultimately allowing how it shapes my work…My interest in examining certain materials and objects in relation to the space in the form of installations has been to cross over these boundaries to discover my authentic self.”
Omori sees boundaries everywhere, but she does not see herself on one side or the other. Like a hybrid, she feels she is in between the line. As a visual artist, Omori becomes a moving filter that experiences both sides of a border that is not solid, but breathes with light and space, as her shimmering installations sift light and space from one side to the other.
Many of Omori’s installations are composed of small, repeated parts that are quilted together: common objects like tea bags that are stained and stitched together to form larger translucent structures that sometimes suggest gateways, sometimes sails, sometimes kimonos, sometimes simple houses. The use of teabags have a specific association for Omori…reminding her of the tea rituals of Japan – teabags not as discarded remains of a common daily ceremony, but unified pieces of a light filled puzzle that are reassembled into a more poetic whole so that cultural traditions mingle with dream and memory. Common textures, color, and light quality unify the individual parts of her work.
Some of her large scale installations are collaborative efforts that employ a group of people to create the work, like individual bees working together on behalf of the hive…reflecting the idea that one single entity is linked to a multiplicity and the border between the individual and the community fades.
The repetition involved in the process of Omori’s work, such as sewing individual teabags to form larger structures, requires discipline that allows Omori to escape into a meditative “zone” where she finds a “new place” in her mind, like a dream. Her poetic, collective structures create a secret place that melts the border between the inside and outside.
Beaumont, Texas
Kurt Dyrhaug (Conference Co-Chair), Greg Reuter (TASA Board Member), and Xenia Fedorchenko (Conference Co-Chair)2008 Conference CO-CHAIR: