Christine Rebhuhn held a question-and-answer presentation on her new piece “Higher Octaves,” recently hung in the Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center. The panel was moderated by Joe Jennison of Mount Vernon-Lisbon Community Development Group.
Rebhuhn, an artist who resides in Queens, has had a long journey getting to the large piece on display in Mount Vernon.
“Back in high school, I leaned more towards crafts like pottery and drawings, and really focused on perfection in those forms,” Rebhuhn said
She noted in college, she found herself not focused as much on the style of art she was learning, but rather gravitated to people and art departments that were challenging her.
She noted that she has been in programs that were definitely not a correct fit for her.
“I enlisted at a college in Massachusetts that just wasn’t the correct fit for me,” Rebhuhn said. “They took art much more linearly and that year made me realize that wasn’t the art I inspired to be making.”
Rebhuhn found her art excelled when she found the right people to help challenge her and get her where she needed to go in her career.
She describes one of her breakthrough moments came from taking class with a pottery instructor who would give tasks that were so nuanced that no perfectionist could complete them within the proposed time limit given, pushing her to look at art differently.
“The class created a lot of frustration for people who were focused on making the best sculptures possible, but as I learned more about the teacher’s formula for art, it helped me as well,” Rebhuhn said.
Her second breakthrough came when she was trying to host one of her first solo shows in New York City.
She had the space ready and two of the pieces that would be the center of the show, but she then had two months to come up with the rest of the pieces.
“In a way, that timeframe forced me to figure out what other pieces to do,” Rebhuhn said. “I knew where to go for different resources or people I might need to hire, and that opened me up to doing more work as a project manager working on multiple pieces at once.”
Rebhuhn said that pressure scenario created some of her favorite pieces of art, but she said there was also a lot of trepidation.
Some of the pieces she displayed were more intense than she had tackled before, and she was nervous to have them on display, but those were the pieces that people liked or didn’t comment against.
“It reminded me I was putting my worry in the wrong place, and that I need to have less fear how a piece is perceived,” Rebhuhn said.
As for the meaning of “Higher Octaves,” her newest piece, Rebhuhn is leaving that for the discretion of others.
The piece being in the community that has been so supportive of her, making connections here and allowing people to reflect on it for the years to come is something she is looking forward to.
The piece is also one of the largest pieces she has worked on, and she had to put on the project manager hat throughout its formation.
“The piece has definitely evolved from what I pitched to Mount Vernon City Council even in November 2022,” Rebhuhn said. “One of the changes I had to make came with logistics. I had originally planned on working on the piece at a studio in Marion, but that changed when I was coming towards Iowa in April area. We shifted from the whale tail being a CVC foam piece to a 3-D printed piece, and that took a lot more to fabricate.”
She moved to Davenport as where her studio space was as she worked on combining the whale tail and the Steinway grand piano, and again, it became a challenge for logistician and artist at the same time.
“I’m so used to having my hands on everything in pieces I’m working on, but this was a piece where I needed to hire people to help,” Rebhuhn said. “If I ever do a piece on this scale again, I’m going to let go of a little bit more of the labor part.”
Rebhuhn answered a question about the naming of the piece. She explained she keeps a list of different titles she is considering for a piece over the course of work on the piece, and she didn’t settle on the final name piece until the final weeks.
Rebhuhn also answered a question on if hanging the piece changed how she approached the piece.
“If anything, it made me remove items that might distract from the piece,” Rebhuhn said. “There was a bell that was a part of the baby grand piano that I had to work hard to remove because it provided something that focuses your eye that wasn’t intended.”
Rebhuhn said she was really happy with how the final piece has come together.
Christine Rebhuhn holds q and a on Higher Octaves
June 29, 2023
About the Contributor
Nathan Countryman, Editor
Nathan Countryman is the Editor of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun.