My piece Love Quote is currently on view at BU's Sloane House. On Monday President Brown and his wife, Dr. Beverly Brown hosted a reception to celebrate the artwork currently on view as part of a rotating show of student artwork.
Image: Love Quote, 2020, repurposed clothing and mesh on sewn canvas, stained with fabric dye, and oil on pre-primed canvas, 22 x 18 inches
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à la ligne, string and thread on denim, stained with fabric dye and bleach, 10 x 8 inches This semester I tried some new ways of working. The piece above was created for an assignment I had early in the semester. Our assignment was to create a painting inspired by a piece of art that we don't like. I first fell in love with painting when I saw impressionist paintings in high school, but have always disliked Renior. His chalky pastel palette is off-putting and his forms often lack definition. They're so etherial, like they're made of someone's hot breath. But the assignment intrigued me. I started looking at his paintings online and came across the painting Le pêcheur à la ligne. I was drawn to the phthelo green + beige color palette and marks he used, so decided to try and reproduce those elements of the piece, minus the subject matter. The first thing I did was turn the reproduction of the painting upside down as a way to isolate the colors and marks. Working from "back to front," I poured fabric dye on a canvas of stitched jeans that I had made earlier. Then I added some bleach to the dye. I worked back and forth until I created a "stain" to work on top of. Then I began adding lime green stitches to the denim using my sewing machine and drawing with a royal blue marker to describe some of the forms I observed, like the flittering leaves of the vegetation. Then, for several hours, I continued layering machine stitches, hand embroidery, and loose threads to the surface until the image felt resolved. I really enjoyed the assignment. It was a practice in empathy. I learned to appreciate the technique of someone's work who I usually have a negative reaction to. It was a little like being locked in a room with an enemy and being forced to find common ground. Left: A Piece of Me, A Piece of You, acrylic, spray paint, oil pastels, string and thread on sewn canvas and repurposed clothing, 18 x 22 inches Right: Love Quote, repurposed clothing and mesh on sewn canvas, stained with fabric dye, and oil on pre-primed canvas, 22 x 18 inches I continued experimenting with mark-making throughout the semester. Above are two different examples of experiments in mark-making that I tried. On the left, I layered a lot of different colored sewing machine stitches on top of paint, spray-paint, and oil pastel until the colors began to blend together. This caused the canvas to warp and buckle. I had seen this technique several years ago in a video of Rebecca Ringquist explaining her process and knew that I wanted to try it at some point. On the left, I created individual marks with the machine, dispersing them across the canvas. To me, they start to resemble letters or characters from an alphabet. Detail of A Piece of Me, A Piece of You To see more of the work I made this semester, click on the tabs pieced and painted and fabric paintings.
I recently experimented with natural dye. I have been wanting to try this for a while and recently found some time to do it. The process was relatively simple and I LOVE the results! The first step was to collect all of the skins. I collected the skins from at least a dozen onions over a couple of months. I stored them in an empty yogurt container (and later realized I could have kept them in the fridge, rather than on the counter). Once I had enough, I put all of the skins in a large pot of water and set it to boil. (I boiled some of the water in an electric kettle to make this process go a bit faster. Once the water boiled, I turned the heat on low and let the skins sit for a couple of hours. Next I strained the dye into a glass bowl and layered some canvas into the bowl. I put a glass jar of water on top of the canvas to press it down and set the bowl outside (so that the smell didn't stink up our apartment). I left the canvas to soak in the dye for a few ours, then removed it and let it air dry on top of a few plastic bags. After the canvas dried, I brought it to my studio. I decided to use some of the first batch of dyed fabric for one of my drawing assignments: to make a drawing response to a poem. I chose Mary Oliver's Song for Autumn. I love that I can feel her presence when I read her poetry. Like I am right there with her, traipsing through the marsh or walking by the sea. In response to her poem, I created several drawings of trees at night. I wanted the experience of observing to come through and to experiment with my sensory experience of looking.
I transfered one of my drawings onto the canvas and then stitched the lines by hand. “A dream you dream alone is only a dream, a dream you dream together is a reality.” - John Lennon
Dorchester Art Project is proud to present Caught in a Dream, a curatorial proposal exhibition that features work by Melanie Bernier, Emily Brodrick, Isshoni Delva, Dory Dinoto, Samantha Fields, Danielle Freiman, Emily Manning-Mingle, Joetta Maue, and Kawandeep Virdee. Caught in a Dream transforms the gallery into an inviting, inspiring space that encourages viewers to explore the ways in which artists weave ambitions, memories and desires into their work. Evoking the Surrealist Movement of the 1920s, when artists created dream-influenced work with the goal of liberating themselves from rational and restrictive thought, Caught in a Dream celebrates the artist’s desire to investigate new possibilities within their practice and to reimagine their world unrestricted by present-day realities. In reflecting upon the boundaries between craft and fine art, the culture of consumption, the prevalence of technology, crises capitalism, and the role of identity, the artists engage in meditative processes and radical acts of dreaming; acts by which they question their present state and generate new possibilities in order to manifest alternate outcomes. Samantha Fields, Kawandeep Virdee, and Emily Brodrick find creative meaning through innovation, play and experimentation. While working on ambitious processed-based work, Fields, Virdee and Brodrick push the boundaries of their chosen media, creating surreal large-scale pieces that prompt viewers to engage with art in new ways. Isshoni Delva, Joetta Maue, and Emily Manning-Mingle mine their personal histories and memories in order to tell stories about their emotional states and roles within society. Using fiber as inspiration, material and metaphor, Delva, Maue and Manning-Mingle grant access into their intimate living spaces and psychological states. Melanie Bernier, Dory Dinoto and Danielle Freiman create art about and as part of their personal activism. Expanding upon their participation in cultural and political movements, they question social norms, muse about utopian ideas, and envision alternative ways of living. In dreaming, the artists can connect seemingly disconnected elements and ideas, and explore their deepest desires and fears. Dreams, when embraced, pave the way for creative breakthroughs, intimate expressions of identity, and new realities. Caught in a Dream creates a perpetually active space in which the viewer is invited to join the artists in the process of dreaming. |
CurrentDrawing from Perception, Invention & Memory @ Stein Galleries
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