Photo // via Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts on Facebook
“AD NAUSEAM”. IU South Bend alumna and professor Chloe Teall, pictured holding her piece “inside outside”, gave a lecture about her art on March 4, presenting her most recent body of work.
By: Timea Brassai
Cartoonist, Staff-Writer
Chloe Teall describes herself as someone who has been creative all her life, but her interest in art began in her undergraduate studies right here at IU South Bend.
After completing her undergraduate degree at IU South Bend (during which time she also worked at The Preface), Teall moved on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in visual arts from the IU Indianapolis Herron School of Art and Design. Now, she’s back at IU South Bend on the other side of the classroom, teaching art to undergraduate students.
On March 4, Teall hosted a lecture about her art at Joshi Performance Hall as part of the Fine Arts Lecture Series.
She explained that art completely changed for her here. Her work as an undergraduate taught her how to let go of her perfectionism and how damaging it was to the artistic process. She discussed the role anxiety plays in perfectionism and said she uses repetition in her artwork as a way to communicate the rumination and repetitive, intrusive thoughts that can occur with anxiety disorders.
Teall’s work spans multiple disciplines, including printmaking and painting, but her recent work has also incorporated ceramic sculpture. She uses a heavily layered process, with acrylic paint and transparent gel that also stand as a metaphor for feeling something even though it may not be visually clear.
“Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean you don’t feel it,” she said.
She uses a slip-trailer, which allows for precise control with clay application. Teall describes her work as abstract, with no outright message. Rather, she invites the viewer to assess our language and perception, digging deeper to create an understanding of the work.
Her most recent collection, “Ad Nauseam”, consists of three acrylic paintings and 15 sculptures. The title translates from Latin literally as “to the point of nausea”, but it is usually used to indicate something is repeated over and over until it becomes exhausting or annoying.
She described each of the pieces as a “literal reporting of her consciousness”, and said she sought to document her thoughts and the internal landscape of her mind. Her fascination with historical relics inspires her to create her own relics, of herself, that serve as extensions of her psyche. Teall uses porcelain for her ceramic sculptures and reflected that, much like us, porcelain has memory; it is also a fragile medium and shows fingerprints.
“I would not be where I am if not for the community here teaching me how to love art and how to do it professionally,” Teall said of her experience at IU South Bend.
“I was very excited to show my work tonight, especially having so many students and former professors in the audience,” she said, reflecting on the transition from student to teacher. “That was also why I was also compelled to talk about all of the work.”
To find more of Teall’s work, visit her website, chloeteall.com, or her Instagram account @cloteally.
