Smooshed Too Mush, an imaginative look at sardine can packaging, on exhibit at Tarleton’s Fine Arts

TSU Media Relations

Special to BENEATH THE SURFACE NEWS

Interdisciplinary artist Sophia Louise Goodpasture will open the 2023-24 art exhibition season at Tarleton State University with Smooshed Too Mush, an imaginative look at sardine can packaging.

The exhibition runs Aug. 21-Sept. 14 in the gallery of the Clyde H. Wells Fine Arts Center in Stephenville. A free reception and artist talk are scheduled for 3 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 6.

Goodpasture, a Granbury resident, has exhibited throughout the United States and internationally. Working primarily through observation, she mostly explores pattern through large-scale quilt studies. Her most recent series, Smooshed Too Mush, shifts from quilting patterns to the small-scale intricacies of sardine can illustrations.

“The exhibition ruminates on playful exterior packaging for tinned fish. The allure of the tin designs is the pull in the absence of any product,” she said.

“Where the title alludes to a confined product, cloistered to the point of obsolescence, the bold colors on the designs and the atmosphere of lightness assert itself as the product’s successor.

“For a product whose primary function is preservation, these illustrations cheekily mock this objective, contending instead that gilded form is enough to sustain.”