pr oce ss
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The 5th Annual Sculptors Guild Exhibition Governors Island, NYC May 26 – September 30, 2012 Faith Ringgold Jeremy Comins Irene Gennaro Michelle Greene Sarah Haviland Lucy Hodson Steve Keltner Elizabeth Knowles Elaine Lorenz Beth Ann Morrison Mary Ellen Scherl Margherita Serra Philip Simmons Katie Truk
process A Juried Sculpture Exhibition May 26 – September 30, 2012 The Sculptors Guild is pleased to announce Process, the fifth annual members’ exhibition on Governors Island juried this year by ACA Galleries curator Mikaela Sardo Lamarche. This exhibition provides insight into individual artistic practice by displaying a model, study, sketch or artifact from the creative process along with a maquette or the finished work of art. This juxtaposition illuminates artists’ process of discovery, creativity, progression and transformation from initial concept to the final stages of realization. It allows the viewer to observe and understand the procedures and working methods of the artist and gain a greater understanding of the process that leads to the completed work of art. Participating artists include: Guest of Honor artist, Faith Ringgold, along with members Jeremy Comins, Irene Gennaro, Michelle Greene, Sarah Haviland, Lucy Hodgson, Elizabeth Knowles, Elaine Lorenz, Beth Ann Morrison, Mary Ellen Sherl, Margherita Serra, Philip Simmons and Katie Truk. The Sculptors Guild was founded in 1937 by Paul Manship, Chaim Gross, Jose de Creeft, Herbert Ferber, William Zorach, Jose De Rivera and Nathaniel Kaz with the primary objectives “to unite sculptors of all progressive aesthetic tendencies into a vital organization in order to further the artistic integrity of sculpture and give it its rightful place in the cultural life of this country.” The Guild continues to be a vital force in contemporary American sculpture to this day.
Cu ra tori a l s ta te me nt Viewers rarely have the opportunity to witness the creative process instead they encounter the finished object, fully realized as the artist intended. This exhibition provides insight into individual artistic practice by displaying a model, study, sketch or artifact from the creative process along with a maquette or the finished work of art. This juxtaposition illuminates artists’ process of discovery, creativity, progression and transformation from initial concept to the final stages of realization. It allows the viewer to observe and understand the procedures and working methods of the artist and gain a greater understanding of the process that leads to the completed work of art.
M i k a e l a S a r d o L a ma r c h e Mikaela Sardo Lamarche, Curator, ACA Galleries, New York is responsible for organizing all thematic and historical exhibitions as well as traveling shows for the gallery. ACA was established in 1932 and specializes in 19th and 20th century American Art, Modern and Contemporary paintings, drawings and sculpture. Since 2005 she has curated numerous exhibitions including the first retrospective in over 40 years of the artist, Francis Luis Mora, Continuum: Celebrating the 130th Anniversary of the Art Students League of New York and Masters of Tempera, a survey of 20th century American tempera painters. She has organized the traveling exhibitions; Richard Mayhew: Transcendental Landscapes at SUNY Stony Brook, South Hampton; American Social Realism at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey and Grace Hartigan: A Survey at the Butler Museum of American Art, Opalka Gallery, Sage Colleges, Albany New York and Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY. She has authored and coordinated several publications including Francis Luis Mora: A Legacy Reconsidered, 2005; Divine Pursuit: The Spiritual Journeys of Achsah and Earl Brewster, 2007 and Grace Hartigan: A Survey, 2008. Prior to ACA, she worked at Christie’s auction house in the Department of 20th Century Decorative Arts, at a curatorial consulting firm which oversaw major corporate and private collections, and for a private art dealer and advisor. She received her BA in Art History from Hunter College in 2000. She is a member of the curatorial committee for the Salmagundi Art Club, New York, ArtTable, a national, professional organization for women in the arts and the Appraisers Association of America.
Fait h Ri ng g o l d Guest of Honor Artist
In 1973 I began to make masks of intricate beading, using raffia for hair. The first ones had no bodies; later I added a width of cloth to make a dress. I had seen African masks adorned in wonderful costumes at the Museum of Natural History and other museums. I knew that the costume was an integral part of the mask: it made the mask a more complete spiritual and sculptural identity, and stressed the fact that the masks are not just objects to hang on the wall but are also to be worn. I wanted my masks to be like that. In the summer of 1973, while away for a short trip I created Mrs. Brown and Catherine, the first of the Family of Woman Mask Series. Mrs. Brown was my mother’s best friend and Catherine Brown was mine so it made sense they would be the first since this was to be a commemoration series of women and children. I returned home bursting with ideas for this new series. I explained the project to my mother, Willie Posey a fashion designer, and we selected the fabrics and trimmings. She created the most wonderful dresses and I padded their shoulders, breasts and bellies to create the illusion of a body. Even when the masks were worn, the body of the mask kept its original identity; a man wearing the mask would have the breasts and belly of a woman. In traditional African masked rituals, all of the masks have female features although the wearers are almost always men. Mother knew the people the Family of Woman Mask Series commemorated – powerful women who never had a chance to be all they could be. They were women who lived their lives fully making a lot out of the little they had, and sharing some too.
masks of Liberia. The Dan mask is carved out of wood but mine were made of finely woven linen canvas which was painted, embroidered and beaded. The face featured a gaping screaming mouth and large round eyeholes through which the wearer could see. The yarn hair was in long skinny braids that hung free on the hooded mask head. The Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Nigeria took place in January 1977. I went over with 250 black American artists, dancers. Musicians and writers selected by a committee of black curators to celebrate our culture. When I returned home I made masks using more beads and feathers and other details. The work became more layered and bolder. I used authentic African brocades that I had bought in Lagos during my first trip to Africa in 1976. I was obsessed with making these new African Mask Series. They were the first of my sculptures to sell. Now I look back at the low prices I sold them for. I realize that I had a need to share this work – more so than anything else I had ever done. It may have been my way of sharing my African experience.
These masks took me back to painting. Family of Woman Mask Series was inspired by the Dan Aunt Bessie, 1974
Jer emy C omin s
In this series of sculptures a lone carved figure is set in a constructed environment. A series of drawings of figures are made without considering how they will be used. Then another group of environments are worked out leaving a space for a figure.Now the figures and the environments are matched up. The figures have to be redrawn so that the scale of the figure is related to the size of it’s environment. The figure is carved from hard wood like maple and the environment constructed from pine. A clear finish is used.
Garden Wall
Ire n e G e n na r o
Yellow & Orange Striped Critter appeared during an especially fruit full time. My subconscious was presenting new images daily, sometimes several in a day. I began as I always do by recording in my sketch books, the images as they appear. There might be several drawings that follow while I pursue the one which rings true. Or there might be only one – the original one. In many instances the original sketch is the closest to my vision and the one that I feel captures the essence of the vision. The process of unfolding always begins with drawing, but the final revelation is the carving itself. Carving is a process that engages, delights and in the end surprises. I never know exactly what will be unveiled and so it is a revelation of a revelation.
Yellow and Orange Sriped Critter
M iche lle G r een e
I often take visually interesting elements from the past and recycle them into the art I create. I repurpose these items, along with other materials, to create something new. “Ship to Shore” is my current series. I am interested in how communication is changing in our society. People talk, text, and look at cell phones...as they walk into people on New York streets. The sculpture “Off the Hook” was inspired by an old ship phone. I often photograph the before and after. I salvaged and photographed the industrial beauty I saw before me. This ship no longer exists.
Off the Hook
Sar ah Hav i l a n d
“Apparition” presents in gleaming silver mesh a mythical human-bird hybrid in potential flight. Like a drawing in space, it exists in multiple realms, neither bird nor human, gargoyle nor angel. The design for “Apparition” becomes visible in sketches; finds shape in a net collage; gets tested in a wire-mesh maquette; modifies in full-size charcoal; is “drawn” with welded steel tubing; and then finally sheathed with diamond-mesh lath. While its structure hints at fencing, lacework, and ornamental cages, “Apparition” also recalls the histories and heraldic emblems of Governors Island. Its form echoes the many cross-cultural avian beings related to the soul.
Apparition
Lucy Hod gs on
The fabrication of a piece of work is, for me, an intuitive process. The materials often suggest the concept and I seldom draw or plan a piece in advance. “Frack Job” belongs a series which addresses the issue of hydrofractile drilling to recover natural gas and oil. I needed to create facsimilies of “oil” splashes which I did by throwing paint at steel plates, cutting out the resulting splashs and coating them with Envirotex - a polyester that resembles wet oil slick. I include one of these templates which I hope maintained the spontenaity that the “technique” of splashing created.
Frack Job
st even K e l tn e r
I employ the effects of gravity, and how a strategically placed invisible linear fulcrum, can affect a planar grid of “tiles”. I document the reaction by reproducing that image in a foreshortened steel drawing producing an illusion of a three dimensional image. It is through the spectator’s cognitive perception of visual patterns found in our natural environment that information evolves. It is my intention to create a source for a Gestalt effect, where the activities within the total field of the whole, govern the perceptual processes. Producing images that are perceived as a pattern or a whole, rather than merely as a sum of parts.
Elipse
E liz a be t h Kn ow les
Natural patterns inspire my work. Some are biological patterns on the cellular level of organisms. Others are geological patterns of the earth’s natural landscapes. My work particularly derives from a fascination with the fractal aspect of life forms as patterns replicate on differing scales. As the fluid process of painting eventually evolves into a formed sculpture, I explore how dynamic patterns connect landscapes and life forms, physiology and physics, death and detritus, growth and form. “Ripening” reveals my process of allowing ideas to open up and flow on paper and eventually evolve into the more structured sculpture “Collection”.
Collection
Elain e L ore n z
Inspiration for this piece evolved from my travels into Slot canyons in Arizona. Water cuts down from the top of mesas creating narrow canyons. The formations and twisting pathways draw one further into the canyon to see what is next around the bend. I chose to make open circular forms to represent those magical and serene places. Primarily I work in clay to create a series of work, but have always wanted to enlarge my vision. The process I used to create New World involves fairly recent technology and was a very new experience for me. I entered the world of computer designed and digitally fabricated sculpture. The process involved learning 3-D modeling software programs called Cinema 4-D and Z - Brush to create the sculpture digitally. The piece was digitally carved in Styrofoam in cross sections or slices on a milling machine from my file. Then I glued these pieces together and covered the surface with layers of fiberglass and resin. My finishing process involved quite a bit of handwork and surface color to achieve the surface.
Garden Wall
B eth An n M or r is on
“Come Into being” is inspired by the exhibition’s theme of “process” as it represents a snapshot of a stage in the development of my sculptures before I skin a frame to make a solid, finished object. Abstractly, it is also a cross-section of the ideas that manifest themselves through most of my work. It will prompt the visitor to consider the variations of shelter, safety and privacy that we experience in our daily settings: from the seemingly impenetrable to a mere suggestion of boundary, a line drawn in the sand. At what point does a space allow one to feel free, as if no one is watching… safe, enough to share secrets?
Come Into Being
Mar y E l l e n S c h e rl
I am examining the fractal globule structure of the human genome (HG). The unbroken painted lines in my watercolor drawings and each twist and turn of aluminum in my sculpture is inspired by the 5 micron x 2 meter unknotted fractal strand of DNA found in every human cell. I have been working with the scientists who deciphered this structure in 2010; we are comparing the patterns I have painted to those found through their microscopes. How naturally alike is my line-work to the structure of the HG? Similar rhythms can be seen in Pollock’s drip paintings as well as Marden’s linear paintings. This new work coincides with unfolding results from my own DNA testing, including the discovery of my birth family.
Nea Zoi
M ARGHE RI TA s er r a
“Remembrances of Happy Days� are works that have used various techniques: foamalite, woods, metal laces, pearls, Payette. These Works are memories of happy days. The theme of corsets is tied to lingerie, including also lingerie of the past and their allusive elaboration on the sensuality of a female body which is not necessarily revealed but strongly imagined.
Rememberances of Happy Days
Ph ili p S i mmons
The drawing and the sculpture were inspired by an artist residency in Holland in April-May 2011, in which I spent 2 weeks on commercial fishing boats in an exchange project with the fishermen. I was working on deck both days and nights, and I became very aware of changes in the sea and sky. My thoughts led me back to ideas I have always found fascinating in physics and philosophy, in particular, the work of David Hume and Werner Heisenberg. Hume questioned our ability to have absolute knowledge of anything, and Heisenberg elucidated the uncertainty principle, which mathematically proved that we can never know everything about an object’s physical state at the same time point. For me, clouds are a physical metaphor for these ideas.
Cloud
Kat ie Tr u k
We start with a spool of wire. Once it has been cut, ground, formed and painted the story can begin. Color, texture, form is chosen to induce internal conversation. The thread is the binding of the pages of the story that I am trying to tell. But you must change your perspective to get all “sides�, mine, yours, and the fly on the wall.
Three Ring Circus