Nick van Woert: Pink Elephants on Parade

When I first encountered this gallery, it truly struck a chord inside of me when I read the title. “Pink Elephants on Parade” brought me back to my childhood when I’d watch Dumbo and other classic Disney movies countless times, over and over. But when I actually arrived at the opening event for the gallery, I was intrigued to find that Nick van Woert had no intention of lining the space with my favorite scenes from classic Disney movies that I watched as a child, but instead with carpeted floors, and many untitled works that at first glance had no relation to Disney at all. Understandably, the child in me was crushed but the artist wanted to know so much more. van Woert’s sculptures are all untitled with special attention to “traditions, rules, and conventions of landscape painting.” This allowed van Woert to truly bring attention to the different materials he uses rather than what the materials have become. My favorite piece in the gallery was a copper work that much resembled a giant gold nugget. Not because of how it looked, but purely because in my mind, it had no greater purpose than to just lay on the floor as it was. Although my hopes for the gallery were a bit unfilled, I took from it more than I had planned. I learned that the materials in a piece are often just as important if not more than the piece itself and that they are constantly in conversation with each other no matter how hard one can try to distance their relationship and I feel this lesson is especially prevalent in book arts where there is such a strong relationship to the materials used.