Written for The Daily Cardinal on January 28th 2020.
Displayed at the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, located at 1922 University Avenue, is a series of works by Peggy Flora Zalucha. Zalucha is a Madison based artist whose floral and watercolor works are nationally recognized. Her current exhibit is “Deconstruct/Reconstruct”, which she created by cutting up her older paintings and reassembling them to create something new.
In an interview, Zalucha spoke about her inspiration behind “Deconstruct/Reconstruct". “Lately I’ve been looking at old paintings and noticing they don’t hold up anymore,'' she goes on to describe how through Deconstructing and Reconstructing them, she is able to make them reflect what they originally were.
Peggy Flora Zalucha has been reworking her past paintings for around 5 years now, and some of this work has accumulated into her current exhibit. While most of the works in the exhibit are reconfigurations of her past works, there are a few pieces in the collection that are collages of found objects. Zalucha explained that a lot of the works in this collection were created in an exercise to better understand composition. Composition, in the art world, relates to the arrangement of the visual elements in a piece of work.
Peggy Flora Zalucha works mainly with watercolors, which she describes as a misunderstood medium. Zalucha explained that at the beginning of the 1900s, people began picking up watercolors as a hobby, which caused the medium to lose prestige in the art world. Watercolor works are also harder for museums to handle, due to the care that is needed to ensure the pigments don’t fade.
Zaluchas work will be on display at the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences until January 31st. Currently Zalucha is preparing to go to Illinois to speak about her work to students at Quincy University. In the future, Peggy Flora Zalucha will continue to paint and display her art, while also continuing teaching at her Mt. Horeb studio.