Claire Rau
Instructor in 2D and 3D Foundations
Degrees:
M.F.A. University of North Carolina, Scholar for Tomorrow Fellow, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
B.A. University of Maine, Studio Art , Orono, Maine
B.A. University of Maine, Art History with Medieval Renaissance Studies Minor, Orono, Maine
My work is an exploration of combat, specifically objects that fall into the categories of anti-personnel devices, hand-to-hand arms, and barriers. I am interested in building sculpture that forces the viewer to be a participant as well as an intruder. Inspired by the jungle action movie Predator, the most recent works are booby traps. Dysfunctional in essence through their ominous forms, clearly delineated triggers, and intense colors or patterns, the sculptures become ridiculous objects of menace. Booby traps are typically used on land as a pyschological threat in non-combat areas and are concealed through camouflage or by sabotaging an everyday object. Many of these traps are hand built, using simple materials with additions of manufactured parts. In its very nature, the booby trap is a defense system meant to keep out interlopers and to take advantage of unaware persons, as the mechanism is set off in reaction to the presence of the body. The name itself implies that only a fool or booby would actually activate the trap, as in Predator, where the alien is eventually defeated through a number of very basic entrapments.
Selected Work
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Selected Exhibitions:
Texas Tech School of Art, Lubbock, TX
Winkleman Gallery, New York, NY
The Front, New Orleans, LA
Kansas City Artists Coalition, Kansas City, MO
Ford Gallery, University of Eastern Michigan, Ypsilanti, MI
Paul Whitney Larson Gallery, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN
621 Gallery, Tallahassee, FL
Other Gallery, Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta, Canada
Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY
Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice, Italy
Bemis Underground, Omaha, NE
Projet Mobilivre, Philadelphia, PA
Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada
Flux Factory Inc., Brooklyn, NY
Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC
Alcott Gallery, Chapel Hill, NC
Courses I Teach:
VA 101 Beginning Studio 2D
VA 102 Introduction to 3D