Sacred Areas: Frost Fest Artwork remodeled the Frost Grove

Synonymous with spring quarter, Saturday marked the annual Frost Music & Arts Competition, colloquially referred to as Frost Fest. Though many visitors come for the music, a rising element of the competition resides within the grove to the left of the amphitheater’s entrance: the Frost Artwork Exhibit. 

Placed on by Stanford Live performance Community, Stanford Stay and Goldenvoice, the occasion caters to Stanford college students and the larger Palo Alto space alike. This yr’s theme of “Sacred Areas” attracted twelve artists engaged on 9 tasks who acquired funding after a rigorous choice course of. Within the Frost Arts staff’s curatorial assertion, they invited artists to “take into account the sacred by way of its many potential resonances and definitions — it could be bodily or summary, spiritual or secular, private or collective — as a power that each restores and transforms realities.”  

Nestled within the bushes, the installations have been scattered on both facet of a paved walkway, inviting viewers to discover the grove. I solely want that there may have been extra signposting throughout the occasion in order many individuals knew about it as doable.

Camilla Napa’a ’25 stated she went to see the exhibit as a result of she has “seen [that] my friends are extra STEM-smart, however I’m actually inquisitive about what they [have] to creatively present to the world.” 

The items different in medium, however the works have been usually massive, three-dimensional and engaged in a number of mediums. Among the works invited viewers interplay; a telescope urged viewers to “LOOK!” into its viewing lens, exhibiting a projected evening sky (“Meet Me within the Stars” by Vincent Track ’24), and a three-dimensional platform depicting an Armenian rug had an indication in entrance with directions to “Take Off Sneakers & Step Inside” (“My Material of Time and Area” by Rima Makaryan ’24). 

My favourite work was “Tinkling Pavilion” by Drew Vallero ’23. It was impressed by tinkling, a conventional Filipino dance the place performers step in between clapping bamboo sticks. Vallero fastened bamboo sticks right into a body utilizing conventional lashing strategies and hung blue photo-sensitive cyanotype prints between the sticks, revealing ghostly footprints and different objects. The skillfully crafted prints have been paying homage to objects floating in outer house or the deep sea. Moreover, there was a chair positioned within the heart of the dice, inviting viewers to think about what it could be like inside this ghostly blue house. 

Miranda Li’s ’23 M.S. ’24 “Lepus Californicus” referred to as on the viewer to think about humanity’s relationship with the jackrabbit and the land we share with it. Li strung apainting of a jackrabbit between tree branches; one facet of the portray used sensible brown colours, whereas the reverse was a mirror picture completed in neon pink. The pink rabbit glowed and stood out, whereas the pure colours utterly blended in with its surroundings. It was a reminder of what number of animals we most likely stroll by each day and by no means discover.

Fourth-year PhD pupil Shintaro Fushida-Hardy targeted as a substitute on human contact along with his “Shrine to Relationships.” Harking back to Japanese structure and Shinto, an Indigenous faith of Japan, Fushida-Hardy’s exhibit invited viewers to step contained in the small shrine with others to examine and worth their relationships with each other. In Shinto, ropes and paper streamers referred to as shide each signify sacredness, so each of those have been current inside Fushida-Hardy’s work. He relied on mates to assist him assemble the shide, tying the challenge again to its intent of commemorating relationships. 

An attendee Hailee Heinrich ’23  stated, “It was simply tremendous cool to see what college students are engaged on and creating and producing.”

Sadly, the exhibit lacked markers labeling every work, which might have been useful in explaining each bit distinctly and instantly. As a replacement, nevertheless, an artfully designed companion zine showcased the artist’s progress photographs, work descriptions and biographies.

Lucy Nemerov ’24, one of many curators of the present, hopes viewers will step away with “a brand new conception of what makes a seemingly regular house; transcend the traditional, what makes one thing sacred, and how one can take into account that inside your personal life.”

The Frost Artwork Exhibit was definitely a sacred house in itself, and the neighborhood ought to stay up for the way forward for this system, in addition to the way forward for all taking part artists.

Editor’s Be aware: This text is a evaluation and contains subjective ideas, opinions and critiques.