To entangle science with fiction
New art exhibit explores humanity's relationship with sugar beets
Park Library's Baber Room Galley with equipment and lighting among a table of sugar beets in a row ready for the "Cossettes" art exhibit by Jacklyn Brickman (CM Life] Corey Hogue)
“Cossettes,” an art exhibition by Jacklyn Brickman, visual artist and Assistant Professor at Western Michigan University, officially opened in the Baber Room Galley in Central Michigan University’s Park Library on Nov. 18. The exhibit aims to explore human interactions with the environment through the lens of the sugar beet which is cultivated extensively in central Michigan and the greater Midwest. There will also be a live performance of the exhibit at 7 p.m. on Tuesday Nov. 19.
Brickman, creator and artist of the exhibition, said it all started with a question. She said everything that came after was the process, much like science but with the creativeness and open-ended nature of art, to give an answer that was meant to be different to everyone.
“The process of working on a particular project or a body of work for me is all about asking a series of questions or engaging in a series of experiments that helped me figure out what that question is all about,” Brickman said.
Brickman said she used sugar beets to illustrate the often-one-sided human relationship with the environment, such as in this case the disruption and possible destruction of ecosystems. She said it's meant to be an open question to the viewer to absorb and digest in their own way.
“I think it's just as important to leave an opening to really have this be more of a question so that when they are engaging with the work, they come up with their own experience that's unique to them,” she said. "People are intelligent, and they have their own agency, their own identity, their own life experience, and them bringing that to the work is really what... the work is all about.”
But the specific subject, sugar beets, Brickman said, came from CMU itself by conversation with Denise Fanning, the curator of the Baber Room Gallery, when she came to visit the campus to learn more about the university and its history.
Brickman said during the conversation with Fanning, the topic of sugar beets and their significance came up. Fanning mentioned that they are an extremely important crop both economically and culturally in Michigan and the wide Midwest, and that by this time of the year, they were in abundance due to harvest time.
“They're (vegetables are) powerhouses of nutrients for our bodies,” she said. "It's something that it is very intimate to humans. We eat every day, that's a part of what we need to sustain our livelihood and, and so we put food in our mouths every day and there's this already this intimate relationship we have with food. I think that it's a great medium to open up discussion about much bigger topics.”
For the exhibition, Brickman said she intends to produce paper from the pulp of the beet and also using a module to take the bio feedback of sugar beets to process that into sound whenever it's touched by guests.
Brickman said the namesake of the exhibition, “Cossettes,” is another product of the human relationship with sugar beets. It is a term for the roots of a beet being sliced into several perfect V-shaped 1 by 2–3-inch strips, the most efficient shape for the extraction of sugar. She plans to demonstrate that slicing of the beet while also wearing a uniform made from the slices of sugar beets based on the design of female agricultural workers from the 1930s.
Brickman said that her aspiration of becoming an artist that mixed the factual power of science and the creative strength of fiction started from early in her childhood in metro Detroit’s Clinton Township. Brickman said she since she was a kid, she knew that she was going to be artist.
“I always knew I wanted to be an artist, (it was) always something I would strive for, and I'm still striving for," Brickman said. "Being an artist is a continual practice, I think there is no moment of arrival. It's always kind of working on that next thing.”
Enrolled at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit for her undergrad, she said she hadn’t preferred one medium and was planning to double major in photography and in fine arts, until she was counseled to take photography and dropped the double major.
Two years into the photography program, Brickman said she switched her major to fine arts and eventually found herself attracted to sculpture. She said her undergraduate thesis was a combination of photography and sculpture.
To learn the technology behind science, Brickman moved to Columbus, Ohio to enroll in Ohio State University’s master’s degree in their Art and Technology program, where she studied in kinetics, sculpture, electronics, robotics, animation and coding.
Brickman said these experiences helped create her art medium that she uses as a means to create change, get closer to the space she lives in and deliver a deeper message about the planet that she and others live in and have to live with.
“What drives my practice is curiosity and a desire to be directly connected with my environment and equally, if not more importantly, to be directly connected with my community,” Brickman said. “I think at the at the core of the work, it's really asking people to share a space and to kind of be humble in recognizing the beauty and the small things that go unnoticed.”
The exhibit is open for all to visit until Feb. 8, 2025. The artist will be at the Baber Room Gallery at 7 p.m on Tuesday Nov. 19 for her live performance, and she will also return to campus on Jan. 28, 2025 for an artist talk.
