Installations in Process for upcoming solo show, Firehouse Gallery, Burlington, VT

I am creating 2 new installations for this  upcoming show at the Firehouse Gallery, opening friday January 14, 2011. I Consider both installatiosn to be three dimensional drawings. Each piece presents an ambiguity and play between the two dimensional and three dimensional realms. The images shown below are schematic drawings and studies which I have done in preparation for creating the final works.

The first installation titled “ Surface Tension” will be made of over 18,000 ft of hand crocheted polyester rope. A series of counterweights, crochted sacks filled with river stones, are connected to the piece with a  rope and pulley system, thereby raising the work off the floor to create a topographical  surface.

 

The second installation, ” Points of View” is made of  a series of poles (painted with white stripes)  that are connected to each other  to create  a matrix of tetrahedrons that will fill the gallery space . With the use of a water level,  pieces of blue reflective tape are mounted on this armature at level. A horizontal datum is established at approximately 5 feet above grade. When viewed from below or above no particular order will be apparent  as to how this tape is positioned yet at a certain view point a level line within this interior landscape will be revealed to the viewer. The work will be lit  by the viewer them-self, wearing a headlamp. The  viewer with headlamp will activate a glow in  the reflective tape while someone standing beside them will not see this phenomenon as their line of sight will not exactly correspond to the trajectory of the lighting source.

 

 

NAVE Gallery exhibit opens

My drawings will be in a three person show at the NAVE Gallery in Sommerville. Note that the official opening is Thursday, July 8th, 6-8 pm,  but if you attend the Jazz concert  at NAVE on June 27th  at 3pm you can get a preview of the show. The other artists in the show are Ron Brunelle showing paintings and Kathleen Finlay with an installation.  My friend, Paul Kafka-Gibbons will be performing  with his group  ” Skinny Emu”, an improvisational music-dance-spoken word quartet featuring Paul, Joe Burgio, Andrew Eisenberg and Josh Jefferson. Look for them at 8pm the evening of the opening July 8th. FREE to all.

for more info www.navegallery.org (see link on my blogroll). Gallery open Fri 6-8 pm, Sat & Sunday 1-5 pm . Nave Gallery, Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church, 155 Powderhouse BLV, Sommerville, MA

“InTension” in the Fabrications exhibit, Newport Mills, NH

My installation, “InTension” , which I exhibited  two years ago at the Brattleboro Museum, has been remounted in the exhibit “Fabrications” sponsored by Cynthia Reeves Projects. My work is now part of a very large  exhibition  of works by 19 artists from around the world which occupies the enormous 3rd floor of the Newport Mills in Newport NH. This should be a great show worth traveling for. I myself can’t wait to see the other works installed in the space. Visit the link to “fabrications” on my blogroll and check back frequently as the website is evolving as the show comes together. The origonal installation of “InTension” was funded by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the Brattleboro Museum. It’s great to see it on exhibit again and this time I took advantage of the great amount of space at the Mill to play with the presentation of the piece….partricularly the placement of the counterweights.

This work is made of nearly 5 miles of handcrocheted polyester rope, river stones and pulleys. The ten “counterweights” support the crocheted enclosure. Ten strands of rope that run from the top of the enclosure, each through  two pulleys to a counterweight  a distance away.

My thanks to Cynthia Reeves and her staff,  Azariah Aker, Anzell Jordon, Sara Mintz, and my assistant Matthew Sargent, for all their help. My deepest gratitude to my husband, Danny, and daughters, Leah and Sonya, who have supported me all along.

Transfer/Transform at The Bennington Museum

My installation, “Tranfer/Transform” went up  at the Bennington Museum last week. It will remain on view through October 31st, 2010 as part of the ” State of Craft” exhibit at the Museum.  Here are some of the photos of the Completed project. Please see my entry  on April 4 for text explaining the project.Please see my entry on May 12 for images of the project going up. I have attached a link to the Museum website on my “blogroll”. See the slide show below for more images.

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Putting up Transfer/Transform at the Bennington Museum

These images are of the process of  completing my installation on site over 2 days, May 10 and May 11.  There were many helpers who jumped in at critical moments  including Jamie Franklin (curator of the Bennington Museum), Tom Moriarity ( head of grounds and maintenance and problem solver extraordinaire), Meg Ostrom  ( curator and  part of the state of craft team),  Allie Lees (Bennington  College student and assistant), Cherie Pfeiffer (Castleton College art student and assistant) and a number of other staff who came outside and helped lift the piece into place. Also my thanks to Anne Majusiak, (co-curator of the State of Craft exhibit) and Steven Perkins(director of the Museum). Thanks also to Don and Bettenelle Miller who gave me a home away from home and fed me so well while I was in Bennington.  And then of course there are the folks who helped to  fund  my work such as the Vermont  Arts Council, The National Endowment for the Arts and the very generous contribution from  E. Candace Forsythe to the museum on behalf of this project. I am so grateful to you all!

check out this slideshow of images.

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Bennington Museum Installation

Bennington Museum Schematic Design

This is a preparatory “Drawing” for an installation that I am currently fabricating in my studio. The final piece will be made of approximately 15,000 feet of  hand crocheted black rope. I am working with 1/4″ polyester rope which I manipulate using an oversized hand made crochet hook. In mid  May I’ll take my work down to Bennington and over a few days we will wrap the column with my prefabricated sheath and then I’ll stitch it up the back side.I will also complete the last few feet of crocheting on site as I expand the  crocheted form to drape on the ground at the base of the column.  All this with the help of some able assistants , a lift and a ladder.

One goal is to have an impact on the facade of the building, to undermine the established symmetry of the columns at the Museum entrance. I am interested in how a work of art can interface  with it’s architectural context and potentially transform or amplify the reading of  structure. I  am aware that I bring a traditionally “female” art form to  the transformation of  a neoclassical column , a column  that interestingly blends both the male iconography of the Doric column with the female iconography of the Ionic.  The netlike materiality of this piece may suggest the openwork of a fishnet stocking  or a fishermans net while the choice of black material picks up on  the ironwork throughout that courtyard and the facade.  The gradient pattern ,  which darkens at the base of the work,   emphasizes the  heavy loads bearing down on the column from the Museum’s roof  and how these loads are  transfered to the support of the ground plane/ foundation. This approach is inspired by an early warehouse design by the architects Herzog and de Meuron.

The opening is May 22, 2010 and coincides with the opening of the exhibit “The State of Craft”. The installation will remain up until November 4, 2010.

Bennington project in process

bennington Museum Installation: Crocheting components in my studio

Here are some process photos of my installation for the Bennnington Museum. First I calculated the form  that wraps the column as a flat shape and then lay it out, full scale, on my studio floor. Then I begin crocheting, using the “fillet Crochet” technique and varying the size of these crocheted cells  to create a gradiant from light to dark. I started with 20  cells across which correspond to the  20 flutes on the column that this will wrap.

Detail of crocheted gradient

My crochet hook

“Fine Cord”, a new series of prints

These intaglio prints are made from multiple registrations of various zinc plates which I prepared using a soft ground technique. A fine nylon cord was used to make the marks in the soft ground prior to exposing each plate to acid. I created approximately 15 plates which I printed in different combinations, colors and orientations to generate a family of images, each image unique yet related to the next. Ghost images, offset marks and the rich layering of color impressions adds depth to these prints. the images are 9″ x9″ on a 19″x 15″ piece of Rives BFK paper.

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On the Level/Under Water

A collage view of "On the Level/Under Water"

This installation ” On the Level/Under Water” was commissioned by Burlington City Arts for the Burlington Vermont waterfront as part of the 2009 quadricentennial celebration of Lake Champlain. This temporary site specific  installation was made of hundreds of bamboo poles  arranged in a radiating pattern on which a perfectly  level datum was marked with a series of blue reflective tape tags. The blue tags extended to objects (trees, light poles, fences, electric boxes etc…) in the surrounding park. When viewed at a particular height ( approx 5′ from grade) this three dimensional field collapses into a level blue line which echos the line of shore on the opposite side of the lake. Water naturally reaches a uniform level and was used historically in construction as  the precursor to the site level. The “water level” was used  to establish building foundations and survey marks for engineering projects and cities dating back millennia. I am interested in this interface between a “natural” substance, water,  and it’s use to establish an  idealized spatial geometry,  a “level” plain, within the varied  topography and irregularities of a landscape. This installation was vandalized  as the installation neared completion  and was unable to be reinstalled. I will be reusing the materials in this project  to create a new installation, a reinterpretation/reinvention,  for Burlington City Art’s Firehouse Gallery, Downtown Burlington in 2011.