A Peak Inside Chloe Pitkoff's 'Laloland'
Studio Art major Chloe Pitkoff ’21 turned to her craft to work through the uncertainty of the past year. “In the first few weeks after leaving Davidson to return home for an unknown and indefinite amount of time, I felt stuck,” she says.
Without the words to describe what was happening, Pitkoff created four images. The two featured here were part of her senior exhibition, “Laloland.”
Sup
4'x9'; Acrylic paint and acrylic paint pen on canvas
From January through March of 2020, I was a member of the Sustainability Co-op: a group of 10 students who live together in a house on Main Street in Davidson with a commitment to sustainable living. The house’s inhabitants engage in a series of rituals meant to foster community, including weekly house dinners. The image of the group crowded together around a long table (crafted by previous members of the house) stayed in my mind throughout the semester, invoking the iconic image of the Last Supper. As an artist who enjoys depicting people in a variety of poses with distinctive facial expressions, and as someone drawn to religious motifs, the image of the Last Supper is one I’ve been interested in recreating. The people and place surrounding me in the Co-op provided the perfect subjects and setting.
Ooooohhhh
4'x6'; Acrylic paint and acrylic paint pen on canvas
This piece explores flipped landscapes in a world turned upside down. An underwater scene decorates the top portion of a fish-faced form, while the bottom bursts with forest life and the many birds that hide within the branches. This year, nature has been thriving, in some cases re-claiming the habitats that humans were recently forced to vacate. While we have been inside, birds (a recurring theme in my work) have been flying free as they always have, coexisting with humans throughout the turmoil and triumphs that come with the passing of time. Hopefully, this knowledge will help us to recognize that light is in sight, and that from the darkness that has shadowed the past year will come growth and life.
This article was originally published in the Spring/Summer 2021 print issue of the Davidson Journal Magazine; for more, please see the Davidson Journal section of our website.