Mass MoCA

As is my custom each year, I spent the day at Mass MoCA and this museum never disappoints!  When you leave the lobby for the various galleries, usually you see an exhibit just beyond these columns.  But not on this day.  Instead you see part of two giant cylinders in the first gallery.

This exhibit is called "White Noise" by the artist Joseph Grigely.  His work focuses on deafness and disability and the perception of sound as visual media.  He has been deaf since the age of 10.  On the walls inside these two cylinders are thousands of handwritten notes passed to him by people who do not know sign language.  When you enter the installation, you are immersed in thousands of notes representing fragments of conversations from thirty years of the artist's life.  I can't seem to put into words the feelings I had entering the cylinders.  It was a lovely feeling and impossible to describe, but I found myself just wanting to stay inside for quite a while.  I wish I knew what that was all about, but it just felt wonderful to be inside these cylinders.

 

Here is a close up of some of the notes fastened to the wall inside the first structure.

And this is the second cylinder and it has a completely different look and feel to it, but I wanted to, and did, stand inside this one for quite a while.  These structures seem so simple at first glance, but there is something really wonderful going on once you get inside them.

I thought this was an interesting photograph because of its shapes, but also to show that the two cylinders nearly fill the width of the gallery.

And I loved the look of this young woman museum guard, but I am not sure they are called that.  She has such a great look, all in black and then that wonderful hat, and she has two pigtails as well!  I didn't want to disturb her, so I grabbed this candid shot, unnoticed.    This is only one of the galleries filled with Joseph Grigley's art.  More on his work in tomorrow's post.