Bethany Springer

  • Artist website: https://bethanyspringer.com/

I am an artist and researcher who monitors awareness in a constantly accelerating world. My interdisciplinary practice is rooted in sculpture, and I create installations and situational experiments that mine the past to see the present, envision the future, and reach a deeper understanding of representations that depict experience in space and time. I gravitate toward objects, places, individuals, and communities experiencing significant change—those on the threshold of metamorphosis, the precipice of the unknown, an end and beginning simultaneously. In my research, I attempt to examine how these larger phenomena affect regional identity and subsequently impact individual experience. My approach enables an immersion in the opportunities and challenges of the present while leaving abundant room for the unexpected to serve as guide.

Often, I use search engines as a tool to interpret and inhabit the world beyond my own heritage and environment, sensing how an object, image, or idea has changed over time and is perceived online. To counter a purely digital approach, I conduct site visits, gathering information from institutions and residents deeply rooted in their communities. What is gleaned from these exchanges is perpetually surprising and frequently reveals an unusual network bridging topics such as etymology, economic and geographical history, science, folklore, and pop culture (to name a few). Pulling from this inquiry, my resulting installations are constellations of collected research, fusions of physical and digital information that visually manifest interconnected concepts—human ingenuity and peril, leisure and labor, consumption and regeneration, vulnerability and resilience.

Companion-For-Reentry
Kelly-Watch-The-Stars
Diviner
The-New-Frontier

A Companion for Reentry (Esther Williams)
Scaffolding components, steel, salvaged floorboards, polycarbonate panel, resin encapsulated foam, thermal emergency blanket, mirrored acrylic, cast resin mason jars, reversible sequin diving suit
192" x 156" x 138"

Kelly Watch the Stars
UHMW polyethylene space harpoon and platform, cast plastic coral, carbon fiber tubes, sewn vinyl beekeeper’s veil and gloves, leather, cast bronze rope coil, gold mirrored acrylic, Styrofoam, steel, bronze foil thermal emergency blanket, Baltic birch plywood, light, polyester mesh prints appropriating NASA Mars Rover uploads
480" x 214" x 80"

Diviner
Cast concrete, red iron oxide, cast bronze jumper cables and dowsing rod, UHMW polyethylene car battery, gold mirrored acrylic, rubber hose, headlamp
96" x 84" x 12"

The New Frontier
Steel, cast stainless steel DJI Phantom 4 Advanced drone, cast bronze Klean Kanteen, fiberglass cast on CNC routed foam based on digital quadrant of Mars topographical survey, gold foil emergency thermal blanket, reversible sequin Tyvek suit
90" x 50" x 50"