Erin Underhill, BFA
Erin Underhill creates tiny worlds to make sense of chaotic technological environments and to explore collective emotions. Her work visualizes how emotion flows easily from person to person, drawing attention to how we react to one another’s heightened emotional states. Through the use of bold colors, graphic lines and layers upon layers, she explores how this collective response is spread in a digital age, one which has led to increased communication but more physical distance. She seeks to recreate the sense of overwhelming visual noise that clamors for our attention. Through the act of making, she is able to firmly grasp this swirling ether of information, tangibly ordering them into her world. As she builds, the pendants get heavier and more complicated, forcing the wearer to look closely and intimately into the mess to find relatable features. The work asks the viewers to take time, slow down, look and sort through the dizzying world to find order and reason.
