VERO BEACH — What is the weight of a human soul? Meghan Gervasio, a young artist currently exhibiting her work at Darby Fine Art in Vero Beach, has answered the wooly question in kind.
When asked why her felted wool sculpture on display, “21 Grams,” is so named, she says, “When you pass away, 21 grams is the weight of the soul. I’m excited and fascinated by the strange.”
That magic number – about three quarters of an ounce – arose from the 1907 research of one Dr. Duncan Mac- Dougall of Haverhill, Mass.
Seems that the good doctor installed a bed placed atop a beam scale in his office where he weighed a half-dozen dying people – one at a time of course – before and after what he determined was the moment of each individual’s death.
His results varied.
Nevertheless, he satisfied himself that the human soul, released from the body, lightened the corpse by a measurable amount.
While medical science has not been motivated to repeat MacDougall’s experiments, the number 21 has lately inspired artists as it relates to things spiritual.
For example, the 2003 movie “21 Grams,” starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, played with the idea of a corporeal soul.
Gervasio’s “21 Grams” comprises 21 ghostly white felt vessels of varying height and circumference.
All are roughly cylindrical, with openings whose edges undulate like the mouths of sea anemones.
The vessels are set on a piece of glass elevated to chest height, the better to view the forms in profile.
Uneven in shape and bumpy in texture, each of the vessels has a distinct character, if not an immortal soul.
Gervasio, who is 28, earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 2011 from the Maine School of Art in Portland.
Her major was painting with a minor in metalsmithing. She made jewelry in copper and silver, bringing color to her pieces with enameling and cloisonné.
She also studied more muscular forms of the craft, taking workshops in pewter- and blacksmithing.
She began working with wool in the second semester of her junior year. For her, working in wool was a natural transition from metal.
Her thesis project, “Imago,” combined the two materials. It consisted of a large, suspended welded steel sphere, “constructed similar to that of a ship’s hull,” says Gervasio, that was covered with felted wool, hanging in tatters at one spot as though something within had torn its way to the outside.
The sculpture was inspired by a yurt – the felt covered, bentwood dwelling that nomadic Mongolians call “home.”
“I made a giant cocoon. It was about creating a liminal (transitional) space,” she says.
The idea was that the artist had emerged, butterfly-like, from the piece – not a bad metaphor for the development of the student into the professional.
“Everybody kept trying to get inside and I was like, it’s my chrysalis! Would you get in another person’s cocoon? C’mon!”
Sculptural form is present in a couple of Gervasio’s wall hangings at Darby Gallery.
The largest of these is titled “Linnaeus,” after the 18th century Swedish naturalist whose system of classifying plants and animals led to modern taxonomy.
It is constructed of both natural-colored and dyed wool, with alpaca hair and silk added for their textural effects.
Measuring 32 by 26 inches, the felted picture hangs freely from the wall, neither confined by a frame nor protected by glass. It features a mass of bright red, barnacle-like forms that project in low relief from an aqua blue ground swirled with purple.
In the composition above the tenacious crustaceans, two yellow jellyfish with long, silken tentacles float like wraiths. Gervasio says that she drew upon nature’s “unconventional beauty” to create the piece.
“Linnaeus” is the first piece the artist created since moving to Vero Beach seven weeks ago.
Yes, Gervasio is a new resident here, but she is hardly a stranger. Her first trip to the area was made when she was nine months old.
“I grew up between Stamford, Conn., and Vero Beach,” Gervasio says. “My aunt and uncle have always lived here, and my (paternal) grandparents were snowbirds.”
In the summer, Gervasio, her sister and their parents spent their vacation in her grandparents’ Vero Beach condo.
“We’d be down here for at least a month, a month and a half every summer,” she says.
“Growing up in an urban environment and then coming to this coastal, very laid-back atmosphere, I’ve always had this ‘city and the sea’ thing going on,” she says.
Back in Stamford, Gervasio says, her father’s side of the family worked in the trades.
“My father was a plumber, his father was a plumber, my great-grandfather was a plumber and my uncle is the electrician.”
She says that the craftsman in her is from them.
“The women in my family were photographers, some were seamstresses. So I got that more delicate side (from them). I’m a mash-up.”
When people ask her what she does, she tells them, “I always like to say I’m a maker. Of ideas, of processes.”
She adds that she doesn’t want to be “boxed-in,” that is, defined as an artist who focuses only on one medium.
But for now, she is content to be the artist working in felt. Gervasio is happy to be in Vero Beach.
“I’ve wanted to move to Florida since I was 12,” she says.
She is happy to be exhibiting at Darby Fine Art. There, visitors are “excited and fascinated” to see artworks made from a substance they usually associate with itchy sweaters and winter scarves.
“I am a believer in material that is imbued with the energy of the maker,” says Gervasio, whose work surface is a massive old dining room table that belonged to her grandmother.
The gallery has a piece of Gervasio’s felted material on hand, made by the artist especially for those who yearn to touch her work. She says that people tell her they want to hold and hug her woolen artworks.
“It makes me feel like a proud mommy,” she says. “It’s interesting that art can offer comfort to people.”
Maybe Gervasio’s felted vessels have souls, after all.