Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone
“Big Yellow Taxi” – Joni Mitchell
How does a person get from Point A to Point B? To find out, I interviewed Mount Vernon native Christine Rebhuhn.
Two decades ago, Christine was my overwhelmingly shy photo student. Yet, I figured something must be going on inside her mind.
In 2007 we both had life changes. I moved to Colorado. She graduated from MVHS and studied art in such places as Kalamazoo College, the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, (Michigan), and earned a post-baccalaureate in ceramics in 2013 from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (Michigan).
In 2012 I became a founding artist of the Artworks Center for Contemporary Art in Loveland, Colo.
Christine visited my Artworks studio in 2013 to view my exhibit purchase photos for her parents Jim and Carol. No longer the shy person of her youthful days, Christine now was an emerging artist.
She had become vocally confident and articulate about her life, artistic skill, and visions.
Now living in New York City, Christine’s first solo exhibit “The Breeze Will Kill Me,” displayed fall, 2021.
“That show was my moment of expansion. I had to produce quickly and create a whole system. My studio, located in a place with carpenters and metal workers, offered accessible resources. I then had to figure out how to show work at exhibit scale. There’s never a guarantee that things will work out,” she explained of her process.
That exhibit became her voice, a powerful compilation of found objects arranged into a mysterious sequence of balanced presentations befitting an artist’s otherwise quiet mind. To create, Christine is always in the throes of noticing and imagining.
For example, her piece “Ride or Die” is a monochromatic assemblage utilizing a bicycle handle and brake grips, intertwined with a ceramic lily, and punctuated with a canary’s yellow luminescence. Simple, yet of incongruous contrast and reflection. (See photograph)
Another piece “Prey for Some Beast” consists of a window that she built of wood, a photograph, a sheet of vacuum-formed plastic (formed over 3d printed/enlarged rattlesnake fangs), and a taxidermy rat that she had custom made to be the same size and shape as the enlarged snake fangs. “The elements sort of ‘grew together’ over time. The finished piece evolved quite a lot from my original idea,” she explained.
Christine’s local influences were potters Lynn Seydel and Clary Illian.
“When I was eleven, I took classes from Mrs. Seydel. It became an apprenticeship to work with her. I learned technical aspects,” Christine explained.
Of Ely’s nationally renowned potter Clary Illian, Christine noted, “When in college I visited Clary. An interesting person, she made quite an imprint on the ceramic communities beyond Cedar Rapids.”
Christine, however, did not become a traditional ceramics sculptor. “Though shy in Mount Vernon, I slowly realized that art is an option. I followed people with whom I had a magnetic connection,” she explained. Those connections helped fashion Christine’s confidence and unique way of creative thinking.
Christine describes her creative process as observation, “looking for recurring themes, instruments, architectural windows, animals, industrial structures. I build up a system of what the ingredients can be.”
“I have freedom to play around, to bring new elements into my network. Some things get suspended into brain space. I look at it for a while, then notice something and how to connect it with something else”
“There comes that spark moment to know when the alignment works. It becomes undeniable. Things connect! Then, I just have to create,” Christine concluded.
Thus, like a supernova, this quiet artist’s innerworkings explode onto the New York art scene. What a potent, wonderful journey that all started in Mount Vernon.
From tall corn to the Big Apple
May 26, 2022
Courtesy photograph by Joe Gray
Christine Rebhuhn is pictured in front of her studio workspace bench where her found objects and mixed art creations are assembled.
