Construction Site: 3 in 3D, an exhibition at Site 131 gallery in Dallas on view through June 8, 2024, features the work of three sculptors, each exploring and probing different aspects of art creation in three dimensions. Alicia Eggert makes works that use light, time, and language, concentrating them into philosophical conversations. Kasey Short shows his Sentinel (2024), which is typical of his large-scale works created with AI assistance that, though prodigious in size, are mostly made of air. Literally creating the weightiest work of all three artists, Jeffrey Lee draws on his background in retail and fashion in his brutalist-inspired works that pair retail fixtures and concrete to comment on the unsustainable consumption of fashion. Each artist takes a divergent path, but as a grouping in the gallery’s space, the works interact in complementary and ineffable ways.
As Jeffrey’s life partner, I was there alongside the many weeks he spent figuring out and fabricating his pieces. Jeffrey now makes his home with me in a crook in the road known as Payne Gap. Like all artists, he was born this way, with a compulsion to manifest his large imagination into physical objects that interact with the world and the viewer. Jeffrey usually has a razor-sharp vision of what he wants to create, but I watched him struggle and learn the skills he needed to make these things a reality. He made these crazy, zigzagging cascades of wood forms and learned the necessity of concrete reinforcement. “I’m heading out to do another pour” was a regular message from him. He worked in a makeshift studio, my dad’s old shop. That alone impacts me in strange ways. It is unexpected and unlikely that dad’s shop served as the creation place for Jeffrey’s work. Dad wouldn’t have understood it, and he likely wouldn’t have tried. I observed as custom crates were made for these sculptures that together weigh about two tons. I watched as they were gingerly lifted onto a truck and moved to Dallas. I saw them take on a new context in the gallery space with the other artists’ work. I watched these objects evolve and come to life in a place that is mostly bereft of art; yet Jeffrey is making Payne Gap a place of imagination and creation. I have such profound admiration for what he gives the world and how he is transforming the identity of his new home.
Exhibition checklist with essay by Courtenay Smith
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