Growing up in Savannah, artist Glenn Dasher became fascinated by the physical tributes that had been created to its long history.
 
“I grew up around a lot of monuments on the squares. My family’s buried in Bonaventure Cemetery and I spent a lot of time at the cemetery,” Dasher said last week as he was installing his sculptures for his opening at the Albany Museum of Art. “I became very interested in it. I like monuments. I didn’t know what those there were about. That’s what most monuments are. Very few people understand what the statues and obelisks and other things they see originally meant.”
 
Now, Dasher creates monuments that explore the way a monument’s meaning can change as years, decades and centuries pass and it is seen by people with new experiences and points of view.
 
The opening reception for Dasher’s exhibition in the Haley Gallery, Glenn Dasher: In Retrospection; Monuments to Human Imperfection, is 5-7 pm Thursday, March 15, at the Albany Museum of Art. Inspired Albany, a photography exhibition focusing on the people, places and beauty of Albany, also will open Thursday evening in the AMA’s West Gallery. The event is free and open to the public.
 
Dasher, a full-time artist after 35 years in academia, combines his sculpting talent with common items he has recovered to make pieces of art that evoke responses that are influenced by the experiences of the observer.
 
“Most everything I make comes from the junkyard – all the parts and pieces – but they’re monuments,” Dasher, the former dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama, said. “Everything that you find in the junkyard that has been discarded has a history. It has a life it has lived at least once before, maybe many times in different forms. Just like ancient pieces of statuary. At one point, they meant one thing and then they are created into something different.
 
“The meaning changes over time. I think that’s the way our lives might be. We take situations we encounter, the bits and pieces of our past, and try to make our way through the present and into the future.”
 
Through his work, Dasher says, he explores issues of personal conflict – politics, religion, love and others.
 
“I’ve always been fascinated by irony,” he said. “People do one thing and it’s meant to be a good thing, and some people interpret it as a bad thing. The work I do, I don’t really want to upset people, but I do like to do the things that can tweak someone’s interest into trying to figure out what it’s about. In communication, interaction is necessary. … I don’t like to upset anyone, but I do like to ask the questions, the same questions I ask myself.”
 
Dasher says his work has a “very traditional, classical foundation” with its broken figurative fragments, stone or bronze architectural forms and symbolism.
 
 “I used to put them together to try to make everything make sense, and I realized the more I tried to make my intent clear, the more it was misunderstood,” he said. “Not everything has to be pretty. Not everything has to be calming and enlightening. Sometimes things can be unsettling.”
 
Glenn Dasher: In Retrospection; Monuments to Human Imperfection will exhibit in the Haley Gallery through June 16. Inspired Albany exhibits in the West Gallery through June 2. The Georgia Council for the Arts’ Inspired Georgia photography exhibition continues in the East Gallery through April 7.
 
The Albany Museum of Art, located in Albany, Georgia, houses an impressive collection that includes 19th and 20th century American and European art, as well as a substantial collection of sub-Saharan African art including masks, sculpture, pottery, textiles and musical instruments.  The Albany Museum of Art is accredited by the American Association of Museums.  The Albany Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am until 5 pm.  Admission is free.