exhibitions

Materials hold the complexity

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Materials hold the complexity

The desire to overcomplicate is strong. I’m not sure if it’s innate or trained in me, but I cannot remember a time in my life when my brain wasn’t working on overdrive to find hidden meanings or make multiple connections. Nothing is as it seems. Add to that graduate school training, and the warning never to be “on the nose” and you have an over-complicator.

Yet I’m learning to let materials stand on their own as I prepare for Shift, July 21-September 11 at Bristol Art Museum.

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The Uncanny Home of Our Imagination

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I'm pleased to share the Shell Jackets as part of "The Uncanny Home of Our Imagination" curated by Lisa Crossman & Julia Csekö with artists Céline Browning, Joana Traub Csekö, Julia Csekö, Amelia C. Young,  Kate Nielsen and Adams Puryear (FPOAFM Studios), Elana Adler, Jonathan Talit and Mia Cross.

THE UNCANNY HOME OF OUR IMAGINATION
March 19—April 9, 2016
opening reception: Sat. March 19, 6—9pm

Nave Gallery Annex
gallery hours: Thurs & Fri, 6-8PM; Sat & Sun, 2—6PM

"This show is a fleeting exploration of the home as concept and lived material space in which taste, anxiety, and desire take shape. Playfully using the concepts of the uncanny and the “uncanny valley” as points of reference, selected objects and their placement within a house-turned gallery are meant to call attention to the act of attaching emotions to the things that populate our inhabited domestic spaces. The home takes on a special role as site of origin and desired return – an (extra)ordinary domestic environment filled with art that may provoke empathy or aversion." –  Lisa Crossman. More information about the exhibition and events on the exhibition webpage.

 

On the Line

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Those who know me know how often I'm looking down admiring cracks in the pavement and sidewalks. Museum and gallery floors too. Cracks are everywhere! They're nature's way of exerting her presence. "You can't tame me", she cries.

I love drawing cracks. I love looking for patterns within them. I love extracting the bits and pieces that are created by these fissures. And lately I've become a bit obsessed with collecting them. Chances are on any given day I have a hunk of concrete in my pocket. I live in Boston and we're in the middle of a building boom. Need I say more?

I first started making the Sidewalk Series of asphalt and concrete miniatures this summer as I was exploring my urban neighborhood's connection to nature. Or lack there of. Each time I found a chunk of asphalt on my walk I'd pick it up and imagine it as a tiny landscape. I'd ask myself what could live there, where the water source might be, and what resources could be hidden inside.

When asked to contribute to On the Line, a group exhibit with one artist from each of the ten stops on the MBTA's new Fairmount-Indigo commuter rail I knew exactly what I'd contribute. The ten new Sidewalk Series pieces in On the Line were all collected within a half-mile radius of my home. Most came from a development parcel in Chinatown where I first filmed the Alone Together Tent Dress demonstration in 2013 and where I returned in 2015 to photograph the tent for Interdependence. During the intervening years a tower with luxury lofts and affordable housing was built. The adjacent wedge of land squeezed between the road and highway ramp is still a beautiful mess of "art supplies" and the last refugee in the area for those without a home. 

One the Line
curated by Medicine Wheel Productions' Spoke Gallery and UMass Boston's Trotter Institute
February 3—April 15, 2015

Spoke Gallery
110 K Street, 2nd floor, Boston, MA 02127
Gallery hours: Wed—Fri 12—5pm and Saturdays by appointment

 

Sidewalk Series, 2016. Found asphalt and concrete, modeling turf and gold leaf. Click for more images including the Chinatown development parcel.