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SCULPTING DISTANCE

Varvára Fern and Travel as the Destination

by MIDEN WOOD

“Now I stare at telephone poles…If I saw a fragment of that somewhere in the gallery, I would be pretty sure it's just an art piece. It's just beautiful in its sculptural shape”

“I heard from other people that works from my travel series can also be dark, because it made people think of The Road,” Varvára Fern says—referring to the post-apocalyptic book by Cormac McCarthy.

We’d been discussing her latest sculpture series—a foray into the lore of Little Red Riding Hood, that started with an invitation to participate in a fairy-tale-themed show. “Little Red Riding Hood was the first thing that came to mind, and I started thinking about what I can do with that; what I can make about it. And I guess it was also sort of a transition piece between my travel series and fairy tales because… it's still the road, and it's still sort of a journey.”

“I started reading a book by Vladimir Propp, the Russian writer who was doing research on origins of fairy tales—why some repetitive elements come up in different fairy tales, even when they're from different countries.” 

According to Propp, each fairytale adheres to 31 story elements, also known as “functions.” In every fairytale, he argues, there is a moment when the hero leaves home. This step is followed immediately by a series of challenges. The journey, in Propp’s version of the fairytale, is all the tests the hero must pass alone—before they receive any help; before they can reach their goal.

Also known as the Polaroid Kid, Mike Brodie is a photographer, and among the most well-known people in the train hopper community. “He has been doing train-hopping, and he's been taking pictures of his travel-mates, his journeys. I just really like the aesthetic of that because it looks like it's very emotional, a lot of despair, and was also very punk… It was something so unusual to me, and something that I hadn't seen before anywhere else—and something that aligned with my experience from my traveling days.”

“I just really like the aesthetic… it's very emotional, a lot of despair, and was also very punk.”

There, too, is travel for travel’s sake. Varvára’s sculptures, like Brodie’s photographs, eschew our goal-fixated culture to find meaning in the space between, before and beyond destinations. The fact that Varvára is able to capture this concept in the context of a single sculpture is no small feat of perspective. After all, what would you imagine if you were told an artist specialized in sculpting distance?

This speaks to Varvára’s talent with perspective—on display in her motif of roads that seem to disappear into the distance—but it also speaks to her talent for observation; for noticing the beauty in the world around her. “It just started seeming beautiful as, like, shapes, and after that I added some more elements, like highways or telephone poles,” Varvára says of her evolving travel work. In this way, Varvára’s work, like Mike Brodie’s, seems to say that the travel itself is made up of destinations—of beautiful sights and shapes that so often go unnoticed. Given its deserved attention, nothing is in-between.

“Now I stare at telephone poles,” Varvára says. “I’m like, if I saw a fragment of that somewhere in the gallery, I would be pretty sure it's just like an art piece. It's just beautiful in its sculptural shape... I want to show it to other people.

Varvàra Fern is an artist and a sculptor. Born in 1999, she grew up in Moscow, Russia and has been sculpting since her early childhood. She entered Moscow Academic Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov where she studied classic and figurative art. Varvàra transferred to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) where she earned a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts and sculpture. Currently living and making art in Philadelphia, she is continuing her education through PAFA’s Master of Fine Arts program.

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Miden Wood is a writer and visual artist with a background in children’s television and sketch comedy. In her professional practice, Miden is invigorated by finding and elevating the why at the heart of our shared experiences—be that a gallery exhibition, a live show or a community conversation. She is grateful for the opportunity to work with and for the purpose-driven artists at DVAA, and, through that work, to serve the larger community.