By Francisco Omar Fernandez Rodriguez Arts & Features Editor On Sept. 11, a reception and short lecture for the “Drawing in HMart” exhibit was held by the Mazmanian Gallery. At the gallery were refreshments during the initial reception. Afterward attendees were led to the Faculty and Staff Dining Room to hear the artist, Cathy Della Lucia, give a lecture about her work and experiences. Professor of Art and Director of the Mazmanian Gallery, Ellie Krakow, introduced Della Lucia with a short biography. She said Della Lucia is a sculptor born in South Korea who focuses on themes of “impermanence, unbelonging, and the construction of identity, drawing on her experience as a transracial adoptee.” Della Lucia has exhibited her work in the U.S., Denmark, and South Korea, Krakow said. She added Della Lucia “holds a B.A. in studio art from Xavier University and an M.F.A. in sculpture from Boston University.” She said Della Lucia is “a beloved former visiting lecturer from Framingham State University and currently is an assistant professor at Boston College, teaching sculpture and 3D design.” Della Lucia began sharing her experiences. After going to graduate school and attempting to find a teaching position in Ohio, she received no offers and returned to Boston, she said. Eventually, she got an email from Framingham State, which led to her interview and her first teaching job in Boston, she added. She said she worked alongside Krakow, who was teaching sculpture at the time. She had guidance both in teaching and in doing creative practices in an expensive city like Boston. Della Lucia said the clay-like sculptures on display in the Mazmanian Gallery actually do not have any clay in them, though that was not the intention. During her process, she found a balance between using clay and using wood, she said. Clay was faster, but messing up could mean failure for the whole piece, she explained. But while she had to learn how to use wood, and it was much slower, it could be fixed, she said. “If you work with ceramics you know that failure is a natural part of the material, of the medium. You’re almost a collaborator with failure,” she said, adding wood could be glued back together, or recut. “Sure, it was moving, but it wasn’t going to move beyond my control.” She also discussed working with wood, porcelain, and clay in the same pieces. The clay parts are done beforehand, while the wood is built around the clay. Della Lucia explained the history behind “Privacy Gate with Invisible Leg,” presenting pictures of the piece to the audience. She said it was “born out of frustration.” Due to the location of her studio, she explained she needs to walk outside frequently. Doing so in that area can be unsafe due to “some unsavory humans.” She said she thinks about how she’s a young Asian woman working by herself. “How do I exist in this space?” she asked. It is an area where men catcall her, Della Lucia said. “It’s something that you work up, you work up and you know it’s coming, and they’re a block away, and I start to get angry, and I’m already angry, working my way up to it.” She said it makes her feel extremely uncomfortable. There was one time, she said, when she was dressed in an all green jumpsuit with work boots and messy hair. “And the guys turn to me, he goes, ‘Oh, you a bad bitch,’ and it was just so unexpected. I expected something else, but it made me laugh out loud.” She said both of the men laughed, and they continued on their day, but it was like the shattering of a gate or even armor mixed with the built-up frustration. The sculpture, or gate, relies on a wall in order to stand up at all, she said. It symbolizes a “private public place,” such as a standard public bathroom, she added. They have some privacy, but people can still see through the cracks and such, she explained. Later on, Della Lucia shared a piece she said is based on her experience at a golf course. Her friends had started going, but she felt extremely out of place. She added it’s a sport where the athletes are expected to wear collared shirts and clean shoes, which was different from what she was used to. “It’s being an adult, and feeling like you’ve established yourself, and then being reminded in these spaces that you don’t belong, right?” Della Lucia said. She showed another piece, one that she said she inherited from the woodworker who first taught her. She wanted to create a sculpture that would go with this unfinished piece - they would need each other to stand up. One piece was even made as a result of a fight at a yellow light, she said. “I was upset for a long time and I wanted to draw that out, get all that anger, all the things you wish you could say in a fight, and I put it into the sculpture right there.” Della Lucia discussed how she uses digital technology in her work. She said she found ways for it to help her work faster and to help her pieces grow. She also uses digital fabrication, she added. By programming a laser cutter to match the gradient of a grayscale photo, the laser “can etch some real depth into the material itself,” she said. She usually starts her pieces by drawing. Some examples she showed were done at the grocery store, she added. One detail that she focuses on are fish with no tails, she said. There was even one of the inside of her fridge, she said. “This is the inside of my refrigerator, and I wanted to show you this so you can actually see they’re not just totally random drawings. There is decision making on what to follow, what not to follow.” Afterward, she’d enlarge the drawing, which helps her learn more about it, she said. She showed a drawing of ground beef. She said it was not a drawing over the beef, like much of her drawings are, but just a reference to it. During the process, she tries to find a form that “translates” accurately, she said. Around this point the sculpture shifts, and the drawing is lost, she added. Della Lucia said the pieces on display in the gallery are actually parts of one larger work. It was created with the idea of the “part of the whole” relationship existing both within one piece and across different shows, she said. The piece in the gallery is about a relationship with food, she added. She said it’s also about drawing in order to better navigate, observe, and understand. “It’s drawing to understand time, of setting time, setting boundaries, pacing, as well as to draw connections between different spaces and different times,” she added. Della Lucia said it’s important that her sculptures can easily come apart and be put back together. “It’s knowing through touching, it’s knowing through doing, fumbling through making, and it’s the discovery of what happens when things collide and they don’t fit perfectly together,” she said. The exhibition will be available for viewing until Oct. 25 in the Mazmanian Gallery.