Site Specifics: Dan Gunderson and Barbara Sorensen

Dan Gunderson, Iron Man, 2013, digital photograph.

Polk Museum of Art - Lakeland

By Suzanne Cohen

This spring, the Polk Museum of Art is presenting a show by two Central Florida artists, Dan Gunderson of Deland and Barbara Sorensen of Winter Park. Working collaboratively, these two artists have transformed the museum with their site-specific installations that provide visitors an opportunity to experience art environments. Gunderson has been a professor of art at Stetson University for more than 35 years. Having spent 30 years almost exclusively in ceramics, his current works visually express his observation of pop culture. An avid collector of old toys, American Indian crafts and ceramics, he started to collect pop culture artifacts such as cartoon characters and superheroes. His contact with such iconography led him to understand human behavior and reflect on the current notion of civilization.

For her part, Sorensen is known for monumental sculptural installations that draw on geological formations and classical elements. She discovered clay as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. After completing her degree there, she went on to work with mentors Gunderson, Peter Voulkos and Don Reitz, among other artists who were pushing the medium in fresh, sculptural ways. She recently turned her energies to large-scale environmental vessels constructed of metals and resins. Sorensen instinctively responds to the form, surface and texture of nature, echoing it in her works. She reinterprets the traditional appearance of the landscape, processing it and giving it back, transformed. Through June 7, 2014.