A different perspective

I was invited to exhibit work in the Moira Fitzsimmons Arons Art Gallery at the Hamden Country Day School (Hamden, CT). Its curator, Caryn Azoff, has had an integral part in creating a rich and wide-ranging art program, as well as a vibrant exhibition schedule rooted in both traditional and contemporary art. It is an unusual space in that its main wall is a large, curved surface facing a bank of glass windows and doors. In addition, there are carved out areas that allow for smaller groupings of work. I also needed to keep in mind the age range of the students using these spaces daily in terms of work placement. Deciding how to hang the work in a new space challenges me to envision different configurations and conversations within and between the work. During installation Caryn, Avery Syrig (my art installer), and I decided to install a grid of the Marking Time series, three tall by thirteen wide. We flanked this large installation on either side by groupings of cyanotypes from the Celestial series and poured paper pulp paintings. Two bodies of work that I hadn’t considered installing in a grouping together. It was interesting to view these works next to each other and watch as they played off of one another.

In small groupings on the side walls I included several burnt drawings on Kozo and Gampi paper - some dyed with indigo, others stitched - and a stitched encaustic monotype. The burnt drawing pieces facilitate interesting conversations with the Marking Time pieces. The difference in size enumerating the intricacies of each. The repetative marking on the burnt drawings echoes in the vast quantity of the Marking Time series. The addition of layers of materials in the Marking Time artworks contrasts to the burning away of a single material in the burnt drawings. In contrasting ways the two lay bare the fragility of human connection and the ephemerality of memory: absence and presence, loss and repair, accumulation and removal.

Not the first time

I've experienced this with other bodies of work. The Memory Project was first installed at my local community art cooperative gallery, and later installed at the California Museum of Art Thousand Oaks (CMATO) in California. Locally, I hung it as I had initially planned at the start of this community project. As a result, I assumed this was how it would be hung in future iterations. It was difficult to let go of my preconceived notions of how it should be installed when sending it off and having it installed by another curator. The curator made different choices than I had, and it forced me to see the work in a different context, ultimately believing it was an equally interesting and viable iteration upon my original installation.

My sculptural installation work, Emergence, has now been installed in three different galleries. The first two installations, at Arts Westchester (White Plains, NY) and the Riverfront Art Gallery (Yonkers, NY), were similar in terms of scale and placement. Each installation was on a single, flat, free-standing wall. This week I installed in a corner space and grouped the installation with sculptures from my tree slice series. I was able to wrap the installation around a wall and from a corner onto the next wall in a way that I have been imagining but unable to do in previous installations. This new incarnation helped me to realize my goal to have even more cocoons in larger swaths, allowing the cocoons to colonize and overtake the white space, spread to ceiling, floor and the adjacent walls.

Its own presence

Installing in different spaces, with differing bodies of work, forces me to open my mind again and again, broadening my ways of seeing my work and to imagine other possibilities and connections. Once something has been installed it becomes the default set in my mind as to how it should be installed. Working with other curators, artists, physical spaces, and bodies of work help keep my mind flexible and my intentions open. It reminds me that art is a living, breathing entity all its own upon entering the world. Once it leaves my studio it fosters its own conversations, presence and impact and in turn teaches me new ways of seeing.

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