Two artists brought their metal and sculpture works to Shippensburg University’s Kauffman Gallery for their net/WORK exhibit last week from August 27-29. 

Sharon Massey showed off her sculptures on the wall of the Kauffman Gallery, while Sean Derry displayed his moving contraptions in the center of the room on pedestals. Both sought to express the interconnectivity of the world through different means. 

The sculptures hanging from the walls all belonged to Massey. Massey intended these to explore “man-made patterns such as masonry, roadways and fences.” A parallel could be drawn between these patterns and people’s place in the world. 

With pieces such as “Cinderblock,” “Spool” and “Mine,” Massey managed to recreate common materials in her own artistic form. According to Massey, the pieces varied between orderly and chaotic, and are meant to invoke thoughts of boundaries, networks, connections and pathways. The exhibits also correlated to their literal titles — “Cinderblock” was a display of a cinderblock, and so on. 

Derry’s exhibits significantly differed from Massey’s in physical orientation. In the center of the Kauffman Gallery, Derry’s “To Borrow Breath” exhibit featured five pedestals—four contraptions surrounding one central nexus. In the middle was a latex balloon that resembled a lung, which gradually rose and fell. The mock-lung breathed compressed air into the pulley contraptions, causing them to rise and fall sequentially. 

Derry’s contraption was a proof that repurposed objects manipulating air could accomplish a variety of tasks in a condensed and simple fashion. “My method of making seeks to affirm the importance of resilience at a moment of increasing cultural conflict and ongoing environmental damage,” Derry said. “The baffling qualities of the medium are emblematic of the complex problems that trouble contemporary being.”

The Kauffman Gallery will next show off “CUT,” a sabbatical exhibition of recent work, from Oct. 1-25. 

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