CC alumna papers Wallach Gallery

In a corner of the MFA show at the Wallach Gallery, the altar-like sculpture by Emily Henretta, CC ’04, looks almost like a miniature city, with its unaggressive yet striking form inviting the viewer to stand or kneel in front of it for a time to admire its intricacies.

The artist acknowledges that much of the inspiration for her work stems from the B.A. in American history that she earned at Columbia. “I’m always interested in things outside of art, in terms of architecture, landscape, utopia, and history,” she said. “Those are things that interest me, so I think that my work definitely is informed by things that are outside of the narrow lens of ‘art’ and ‘art-making.’”

This interest in things that are outside the realm of “art-making” makes sense in terms of Henretta’s choice of medium—paper and glue. “I was sort of interested in making sculptures out of paper, because I’ve always been fascinated by paper,” Henretta said. “Because I come from a printmaking background, paper has always been something I touch with my hand and have an intimate relationship with.”

Her transition from printmaking to altar-esque installations is part of defining her own medium: “I’d always done installations in conjunction with printmaking, and that’s partially why I wanted to go to grad school, to translate my two-dimensional sort of world into a more three-dimensional space. And that was the impetus for this. It’s funny working in paper, because it’s familiar to a printmaker, but making it a sculptural entity instead of a flat space, experimenting with different forms of mark-making, is really interesting,” she said.

Though her work is made of paper, she doesn’t mean it to necessarily be an environmental statement. Her interest in history is what really informs her use of paper: “It’s called ‘Remainder Space,’ and it’s just the remainder of all of those things that were printed, the things that aren’t here, which are a lot bigger than what it [the actual piece] is, which is just sort of the ‘remainder,’” Henretta said. “I thought it [the idea of the remainder] was sort of an interesting idea in terms of history, in terms of the past and making something out of what’s left over, which works with the idea of an altar—it demarcates a time.”

Henretta’s work is just one example of the inventive art being created in Columbia’s MFA program. These artists are bringing to life unique ideas and interests while defining an aesthetic of their very own. Henretta certainly has intricate ideas to accompany her intricate art. Her work can be summed up in her own words: “A candle burns and you see the burnt wax and you know that that happened, but that it was in the past.”