BFA EXHIBIT ARCHIVE
Visual Resources Library
 

Eric Gunnarson: Possible Dreams

Gallery 3, 10/11/2021–10/15/2021

Advisors: Shannon Wright, Lynn Dau

 

Artist's Statement

“Possible Dreams” is a visitation of a past memory from my childhood. As a creative and rambunctious child, I had many dreams and ideas of things I could do, but lacked the development in understanding to realize that they were not asachievable as I had hoped. One such project took the form of a Cardboard Submarine. When I was 7 or so I saw in a cardboard box, a coat hanger paddle and my mother's whole supply of kitchen plastic wrap the potential to make undersea exploration possible. This impossible dream felt so thoroughly doable at that time that I was confused at my mother's frustration over my material acquisitions. Now, roughly 20 years later, I have learned that hydrodynamics would have made short work of my child idea, but the soul of it is still true. In this work I wanted to capture that awe and profound potential that my child-self saw in a bit of carboard and plastic. This willingness to believe the impossible into being is a core of creativity I still try my best to cling too, despite the world and its mundanities trying to wrench it from us all.