3/5: Emerging Artist Series at Sculpture Center

By the time electricity gets to our coffeemakers and computers, the dirty part is gone. The moist and gaseous “blackdamp” is left behind in the mines, and the mountains — with their tops removed and dumped into streams — are hundreds of miles away. Sculptor Willard Tucker’s exhibit Blackdamp shows electric ugliness in another way, imagining the electrical grid as a central nervous system, feeding rickety-looking sculptures that pop and arc with static charges. Tucker and sculptor Carrie Dickason — who also has a new exhibit, Cultivating Culture — both respond to what society has done to the landscape. Dickason’s work uses scavenged items to recreate fragments of the landscape. One untitled piece incorporates carpet, soil and cement to evoke a formal garden. Another uses chunks of broken foam insulation, iron and wheels to suggest a layered buildup of broken sedimentary rock. Both exhibits are featured in the Sculpture Center’s Emerging Artist Series and open at 5:30 today. Tucker talks about his work at 6:15 p.m.; Dickason talks at 7 p.m. The exhibits hang through April 10 at the Sculpture Center (1834 E. 123rd St., 216.229.6527). Admission is free. — Michael Gill