Meg Lipke, In the Making by Burlington City Arts

Meg Lipke: In the Making is supported in part by Stephanie Spencer and Rolf Kielman and anonymous donors. All works courtesy the Artist and Broadway, NY.

Burlington City Arts is supported in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts through the New England Arts Resilience Fund, part of the United States Regional Arts Resilience Fund, an initiative of the U.S. Regional Arts Organizations and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with major funding from the federal CARES Act from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

As a curator working in the field of contemporary art, I am honored and delighted to curate In the Making. One of the most innovative painters working today, Meg Lipke’s creative practice and intrepid commitment to pushing the boundaries of painting is inspiring to anyone who enters the gallery, whether they are a dedicated artist or a casual visitor. Meg Lipke questions conventional notions of painting with her colorful shaped abstractions. Featuring work from the past five years, In the Making surveys Lipke’s ingenious evolution as a painter. Beginning with her rejection of traditional painting as defined by the stretcher, the exhibit surveys her progression to suspended canvas and transition to stuffed and sewn paintings ranging from small, soft structures to more elaborate and large-scale constructions. Working directly on canvas or cloth, Lipke may cut, stain, or sew her materials to create paintings that project from the wall, or rest upon the floor. The space around and between each composition is as much the artist’s subject as is her material creation. Many of these soft, pliable paintings imaginatively conjure aspects of the human form – disembodied limbs or arms – seemingly animate and poised to leave the space. One such work is Slanting Grid, which leans dramatically to the right and is further energized by bands of pink, green, yellow,

and blue that stain and spill across the surface. Three triangular “feet” touch the floor, suggesting the grid may at any moment slip from the wall to escape its own limitations. Within the grid, a solitary fabric square remains – the last sign of what we once thought defined a painting. Created specifically for her solo exhibition at Burlington City Arts, Slanting Grid is the culmination of years of experimentation and synthesis. The work is a true manifestation of Lipke’s ideas and arrival at a new stage: the monumental. Through approach and process, Lipke draws upon the canons of 20th-century modernism as she concurrently summons past craft traditions and memories of the creative practices of her mother and grandmother. Lipke deftly interweaves these legacies to make innovative work that reinvigorate contemporary abstract painting and its possibilities. BCA is proud to present Meg Lipke’s first solo exhibition in Vermont in over a decade. She is a remarkable artist whose familial and artistic development is deeply rooted in Burlington, where she attended school and university. Her mother, Catherine Hall, is a well-respected Vermont artist and educator, who taught at St. Michael’s College and co-founded Burlington’s 215 College Gallery; and her father, William “Bill” Lipke was a tenured professor of art history at the University of Vermont.

Slanting Grid, (detail), exhibition view, BCA Center, 2021

Many people have given generously of their time and attention to In the Making, but none more so than the artist. Despite the adversity presented by the global pandemic, Lipke enthusiastically embraced her solo exhibition with enthusiasm, flexibility, and an openness to showcasing her work in her former home and community –– a place where she made life-long friends and was inspired by local educators and artists to pursue her creative practice. I’d like to extend special thanks to Margot Norton, Curator, New Museum, and Chelsea Spengemann, Director, Stan VanDerBeek Archive, for their thoughtful catalog essays and their gifted ability to contextualize Lipke’s work within the critical framework of art history.

On behalf of BCA, I am also grateful for the support of Stephanie Spencer and Rolf Kielman, as well as anonymous donors, who through their generosity contributed to presenting In the Making at BCA Center. I’d also like to thank my colleagues, BCA’s talented and dedicated staff, who are committed to presenting the very best of contemporary art and ideas to our Burlington community through this exhibition and catalog project.

Heather Ferrell Curator and Director of Exhibitions

In the Making, exhibition view, BCA Center, 2021

No Bones Meg Lipke’s works convey a particular sense of freedom—the first, and most apparent, absence of constraint being the lack of bones, or more accurately, those stubborn rectilinear supports (a.k.a. stretcher bars) that have become painting’s de facto infrastructure. Her liberal amalgam of painting (and non-painting) techniques provides further evidence of her uninhibited approach, as she applies pigment, irreverently, even joyfully, drawing as much from art historical references as from craft and popular culture. Next are her reposed stuffed canvases, which slump, lump, and bend with gravity’s pull, perhaps existing in a relaxed state of just being, rather than evidencing pressure to perform. Most recently, the architectural scale at which Lipke creates works defy painting’s traditional reliance on the wall to encompass and soften the hard-edges of rooms. They invite the viewer’s body to enter as one might approach a welcoming threshold or another’s embrace. With her paintings, Lipke summons a rich and varied history of feminist artists before her, whose works similarly defied patriarchal legacies of artmaking. These include Lynda Benglis’ amorphous pours of DayGlo liquid rubber latex (see Contraband [1969]); Harmony Hammond’s cloth-bound, corporeal, ladder-like forms (see Hug [1978]); and Eva Hesse’s iconic act of defiance to the frame in Hang Up (1966). Lipke’s

Conversation with the author, Tuesday, January 5th, 2021.

vibrant palette, imaginative forms, and sculptural presence also recall the inventively shaped canvases of Elizabeth Murray, or the whimsical yet rigorous, twirling Celastic compositions of Ree Morton. Yet, Lipke blends these art historical affinities with those from non-art sources and the everyday, to create works that are effortlessly contemporary and entirely her own. These exuberant, unbounded works I describe originally came from a place of frustration. In 2013, Lipke described reaching a “dead end” in her painting practice, feeling fraught with painting’s history and the pressure to operate within its confines (i.e. stretcher bars equals greater market value).1 She spent nearly a year creating works on paper before experimenting with various craft-based techniques, particularly Batik—an Indonesian wax-resist dyeing process that she learned from both her British grandmother, Patricia Sinclair Hall, and mother, Catherine Hall, and since has become a mainstay in her practice. Lipke worked through her frustration by experimenting: cutting and collaging material fragments (see Layered Painting [2014-2015] [page 16]); pinning her fabrics directly to the wall (see Map/Steps [2015] [page 18); and eventually stuffing her dyed textiles with polyester fiber to create cloud-shaped, cushion-like objects (see Black Cloud [2014-15] [page 20]).

In the Making, exhibition view, BCA Center, 2021

In 2016, Lipke’s work took a turn as she began to incorporate intricate stitching to create limb-like stuffed forms from remnants of clothing—a technique that has the effect of deepening the intimate quality of these works through their relationship to the body. Both Loop Hoop (2016) [page 24] and Parallel Bones (2016) [page 28] piece together repurposed sleeves from coats that Lipke’s children had outgrown. They recall rich traditions of quilt making: transforming salvaged fabrics, or clothing once worn by loved ones, into vibrant patterned blankets, such as those inventive

abstractions created in the remote, AfricanAmerican community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Parallel Bones was made following an incident when Lipke’s daughter broke her elbow and recovered in a cast, and features careful applications of pastel-colored plaster gauze wrapped tightly around the “flesh” of her stuffed fabrics. In her repurposing of these coat sleeves that once contained tiny, growing limbs kept safe and warm, Lipke’s paintings become skins—scarred, porous surfaces, which she imbues with remarkable beauty and pathos.

In the Making, exhibition view, BCA Center, 2021

In recent years, Lipke’s works have increased in scale, not simply for reasons of magnitude, but perhaps in order for them to transcend their reliance on architecture. Slump (2017) illustrates a step in this direction, as the painting is supported both by the wall and by itself, with a “foot” resting directly on the gallery floor [page 36]. Other recent works, such as Big Pink (2020), sagging down in the middle to caress the ground, and Black and White Vibrations (2020), sitting firmly on the floor while leaning its weight against the wall, similarly assert themselves into the space of

a gallery. Because of the sheer height of these paintings (Black and White Vibrations stands at eleven feet), their edges often graze the ceiling, suggesting that they might be approaching architectural elements in and of themselves. They are at once monumental and vulnerable, colossal and soft. Slanting Grid (2020), which was made specifically for a particular wall in Lipke’s 2021 solo presentation at Burlington City Arts, presents the artist’s version of the grid, slightly askew, leaning gently toward the right. Brightly-hued

and loose applications of acrylic paint on the surface of the canvas run counter to the patterned straight lines of its checkerboard form. Yet this work poses an inherent impossibility, which renders a captivating tension: How does one adhere to the exact proportions of a grid with materials that refuse rigidity? And, why might one feel the urge to manipulate these materials thus when their nature runs counter to it?

Slanting Grid, like many of Lipke’s works, signals the arbitrariness of the structural language of painting—a language that has become deeply ingrained in our systems of value and bound to the medium’s patriarchal lineage. Her stuffed canvases point toward a way of artmaking that is decidedly unfixed—malleable in its forms, materials, and techniques, with room to grow, bend, slouch, protrude, transcend, transform, and break free.

Margot Norton, Curator New Museum, New York

Connections and Crossovers Most of the work that I’ll deal with falls into an area that can be considered eccentric and/or personal. This is an area that I feel women have opened up for all artists, male and female. -Ree Morton1 Meg Lipke’s recent paintings are boldly stained, dominating, thick structures displayed on the wall like found, oversized puzzle pieces, inflated and bulging into space, refusing to fit their original purpose. Visible, hand-sewn stitches and thin layers of paint in a carefully selected range of colors, saturations, finish, and application in a work such as Lavender Aqua (2020) [page 39] suggest complete confidence in method and execution. Reminiscent of artistic predecessors such as Louise Bourgeois and contemporaries such as Sterling Ruby, Lipke’s years of practice are manifested in her expert manipulation of scale, weight, color, and form. Whereas Lipke’s forms and filled paintings convey a tactile softness, the layers of colors and stitching in many works suggest a reworking of sentimental objects. There is a pull between a handmade, feminine touch and the industrial effect of certain shapes and colors in Lipke’s paintings that are recognizable in the Celastic wall works of Ree Morton. Morton’s installation, For Kate (1976) consists of thickly applied green and pink paint that adds a permanent firmness

Patricia Sinclair Hall, Untitled Tapestry, c. 1975, yarn and cloth on burlap, 42 x 28"

1. Ree Morton to Marcia Tucker, draft letter, ca. 1975, Estate of Ree Morton as quoted by Kate Kraczon in “A Spiral Rather than a Line: Ree Morton’s Artistic Cosmology,” in Ree Morton: The Plant that Heals May Also Poison (Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Philadelphia: 2019) pg. 57.

Catherine Hall, Cape, 2012, Japanese gauze paper, wax and dye mounted on silk, 31 x 35"

to the strands curving up and off the wall. The roses in the work are brittle, yet bright like old frosting. “Kate” is thought to be a reference to Morton’s grandmother—a personal detail seemingly never confirmed, perhaps out of preference for ambiguity. Lipke’s grandmother is also referenced occasionally in her work, a lineage she balances not unlike Morton, with reverence, but from a distance.

In fact, various shapes in Lipke’s work, like those in Dream of a Painting (2017) [page 26] are taken directly from extant works by her grandmother, Patricia Sinclair Hall, including Untitled Embroidery. Hall had four children with a textile mill owner in Manchester, England, and guided two of those children through art school. Lipke’s mother, celebrated artist and art historian Catherine Hall, learned how to build a tapestry loom as a teenager and made one for her mom. When the mill closed and the house filled with yarn purchased from other mills to resell to weavers, Patricia Hall began making, “wild weavings and embroideries with the materials close at hand.”2 Beeswax was another common material Hall used for painting on silk scarves that would come to influence her descendants. To create stunning works like Pink Fall (2013), Hall dipped dozens of differently sized, delicate sheets of gauze paper into melted wax, assembled them as a hanging, v-shaped textile, and then applied dye. Shifting, cascading layers of dark to light rose end in a fine point. For Lipke, seeing her mother make these objects led to her own experimentation with

Catherine Hall, “Meg Lipke, Catherine Hall, Patricia Sinclair Hall - The Story of Three Generations,” YIFAT_GAT_STUDIO.com, September 1, 2015.

In the Making, exhibition view, BCA Center, 2021

beeswax as a drawing method, as seen in earlier works like Black Cloud (2014-15) [page 20]. Familial gestures also appear in the repeated form of the loose grid, especially in works like Slump (2017-2018) [page 36]. This shape references mill architecture as falling/failing — an experience tied to Lipke’s family history and the larger narrative of the post-industrial West inherited by many from their generation. The manipulation of fibers, stacked forms, and beeswax in both Catherine Hall’s and Lipke’s work is a language shared through this maternal

line yet expanded from craft to fine art with each artist’s shifting context and intention. The tradition of adapting art-making techniques transmitted across generations of family and the thrift of using material close at hand as a personal referent is a common thread between many art practitioners, known and unknown. Lipke grew up watching her mother work in her home-studio, offering advice when asked, and eventually developed her own practice. She now invites her children into her studio to do the same.

Other artists and writers who integrate their role as a mother with their practice come to mind-- Luchita Hurtado, Audre Lorde, Bernadette Meyer, Sylvia Plath, and Faith Ringgold, to name a few. Together, these practitioners form a sort of collective through their maternal bonds across medium, race, and class. The experience of motherhood is arguably not a central subject of Lipke’s, or any of these other artists’ practice. Rather, the connections Lipke has to other mother/ed/ing artists through her work remains one of many entry points through which her work attracts viewers.

As calls to reevaluate the discipline of art history embrace space for a diversity of narratives to be told through an expanding range of art forms, the question as to why one artwork over another often leads to the artist’s identity and context of production. Narrow biographical details matter in this process, not as myth but rather as a path back to connections and crossovers.

Chelsea Spengemann Director, Stan VanDerBeek Archive

Layered Painting, 2014-2015 Ink, acrylic, dye, and beeswax on muslin over linen 10 x 8 x 2" facing page: Layered Painting (detail)

Maps/Steps, 2015 Fabric dye, market, and beeswax on muslin 73 x 46"

The earliest work in the show, Layered Painting, (page 16) was created at a time when – dissatisfied with her painting practice – she began experimenting with cutting and collaging painted canvas onto the stretcher. Inspired by craft tradition, the artist began incorporating encaustic and batik-inspired techniques using dye and wax into her paintings. Eventually, Lipke began to gather and cut material into sewn sections to form her first stuffed paintings. Early works such as Map/Steps exemplify this process and were pinned directly to the wall.

Black Cloud, 2014-2015 Wax resist and fabric dye on muslin with polyester fill and thread 21 x 25 x 2"

It is tempting to consider Lipke’s work more akin to soft sculpture than to painting. However, Lipke affirms these works are a natural extension of the process and history of painting – one that surprisingly hasn’t evolved that much over its history. Lipke states, “I want to expand the conversation about painting, I don’t need to limit painting to the four sides of a rectangle on a flat support with wood stretchers…That underlying material assumption automatically limits what exploration can happen in the work.”1 As a result, Lipke developed the idea of a painted structure – something soft and lacking an interior framework. One of her earliest expressions of this idea is Black Cloud (2014-15). In this work, the artist incorporates wax resist patterns inspired by Indonesian Batik tradition into her shaped canvas before she stuffs it with polyester fiber. No longer dependent on a frame, the soft, curved form of the painting emerges from the wall emanating both weight and volume.

Conversation between In the Making curator and artist, January 22, 2021.

Support, 2015 Muslin, fabric dye, and beeswax with polyester fill and plaster 18 x 9 x 4"

Double Frame, 2016 Fabric dye, muslin, polyester fill, and thread 20 x 20 x 2"

Loop Hoop, 2016 Rayon, wax, fabric dye, wool, and thread 59 x 33 x 5"

In 2013, Lipke reached an impasse in her painting practice – frustrated and uncertain of her next direction. Confined by expectations of what constituted contemporary painting, she began working on paper, which enabled her to take risks and experiment more freely. For approximately a year she worked with paper. She then began to explore painting on unstretched muslin and canvas; cutting and collaging her material before (or after) painting; ultimately stuffing her paintings with polyester fill. An early example of this work is Loop Hoop, created from the discarded sleeves of coats outgrown by Lipke’s children. The various fabrics sewn together are reminiscent of traditional fiber arts or quilt-making traditions. Lipke’s approach to materials originates with her familial history and the important role textiles played throughout several generations of her family. Her grandparents’ business in Cheshire, England, specialized in making and dying yarns through the 1960s. Her grandmother, Patricia Sinclair Hall, was a self-taught artist who created yarn weavings from spare materials from the family mill, while her mother, Catherine Hall, often still applies a craft aesthetic into her paintings and mixed media assemblages. For Lipke, it was a natural evolution for her to move from the stretched canvas of a conventional painting to canvas that she could cut, sew, stuff, and paint.

Dream of a Painting, 2017-2018 Acrylic on canvas with polyester fill and thread 84 x 44 x 9"

In Dream of a Painting, Lipke creates a work that is both abstract and figurative. The organic shape and colors of this brightly stained canvas are the embodiment of contemporary abstraction. The sewn, stuffed form is reminiscent of an oversize frame that surrounds the negative space of the wall. The painting’s shape, much like a doorway, playfully invites the viewer to step through the composition and be transported to a different place. With the blank, white wall framed by the painting, it appears that the subject has been removed from the composition. Or, perhaps the artist has re-imagined her painting as disembodied limbs embracing the space, the skin of the plump, stuffed fabric marked by wax and paint. This ambiguity of form, figure, and subject is entirely intentional. For Lipke, her work is most successful when it creates an uncertainty and slight discomfort in the viewer – a consequence of facing something new and unknown, or our beliefs being challenged as to what a painting should be.

Parallel Bones, 2016 Acrylic on rayon and muslin with plaster and gauze 37 x 28 x 4"

Sail, 2016 Ink, Flashe, canvas, and muslin with polyester fill 32 x 26 x 4"

Icon l, 2017 Muslin, canvas, acrylic, beeswax, polyester fill, and thread over steel armature 83 x 6 x 9" Above: detail

Portal, 2017 Acrylic on canvas with polyester fill and steel 70 x 54 x 7"

Lipke often begins her compositions with a sketchbook drawing. She may also create several iterations of the work as a model and drawing before establishing the painting’s final form, as in the case of Portal. The design of this painting evolved from a cardboard model inspired by an Easter egg display which Lipke had found. Its unusual shape also reminded her of the color sample cards from her grandfather’s textile business that she had always found formally captivating. Larger works such as Portal require vast amounts of canvas, which the artist unrolls, cuts, and places upon the floor as if a singular sheet of paper. Using a marker, she draws directly onto the canvas where the reinforced, industrial thread of an upholsterer can follow her design. The artist often completes the interior seams of her painting with hand-stitching, as she has done in works such as Portal or Loop Hoop. Once the form is established, Lipke’s process varies. She may first stain and paint the canvas; cut and apply additional elements; and then sew and stuff the final form – or she may begin by sewing and stuffing the work before painting. The sheer physicality of the process especially in her more large-scale works is formidable.

Icon ll, 2017 Muslin, cotton, rope, and fishing net over steel armature 67 x 8 x 6" Above: detail

Slump, 2017-2018 Acrylic and beeswax on canvas with polyester fill and thread 87 x 72 x 13" (installation dimensions vary)

In Slump, Lipke sews two large sections of canvas together, creating rows of sewn channels before she stuffs and paints the work. What emerges is a threedimensional form that can, as the artist states, “occupy both the plane of the wall (traditionally the place to view painting) and the floor (the traditional domain of sculpture).”1 As her painting acquires volume and form, it becomes animated, almost figurative. Works such as Slump even develop a sense of posture, leaning and bending under its weight. Larger, more ambitious projects such as Slump are first explored as cardboard models in her studio. For Slump, she created a small model of cardboard and house paint, which remained in her studio for some time. As she became more enamored with the form, she created a larger, modified version of the cardboard design, which in turn evolved into a largescale drawing. With each iteration of the work, Lipke began a new investigation while her relationship to form and image became more intimate and thoughtful.

Conversation between In the Making curator and artist, January 22, 2021.

Ground for Body, 2019 Fabric dye, acrylic, beeswax on canvas, and polyester fill 87 x 67"

Lavender Aqua, 2020 Acrylic on muslin with polyester fill and thread 13 x 19 x 3"

Lipke’s most recent work, Small Figure, demonstrates how the artist has refined her process and materials to focus exclusively on acrylic textile paints. The artist creates patterns of animated colors to establish mood and rhythm as she shapes and defines her canvas. As Lipke deconstructs painting, she reshapes its possibilities, identifying painting’s most intrinsic elements: material, volume, space, color, and form.

Small Figure, 2020 Acrylic on canvas with polyester fill and thread 25 x 16 x 3"

Mother Body, 2020 Acrylic on canvas with polyester fill and thread 37 x 26 x 7"

Created specifically for her solo exhibition at Burlington City Arts, Slanting Grid employs many of the techniques and concepts Lipke has developed over her career, and elevates them to a stunning, architectural scale. Slanting Grid, 2020 Acrylic and beeswax on muslin with canvas, polyester fill, and thread 8' x 18' x 7"

Slanting Grid also questions our assumptions about painting – specifically the “grid” – a structure used by generations of artists to create perspective or organize space.

From some of its earliest manifestations in the Renaissance to its evolution over the last century as a visual construct in contemporary abstraction, the grid is a fundamental principle of painting. Or is it? For Lipke, the grid’s essential presence in contemporary painting has been exhausted. Slanting Grid supplants this essential construct with a colossal, unwieldy version of itself and its histories.

Leaning and stretching dramatically to the right, Slanting Grid is energized by vibrant bands of pink, green, yellow, and blue that stain and spill across the surface. Three triangular “feet” touch the floor, as if the grid may at any moment slip from the wall escaping its own limitations. Within the grid, a solitary fabric square remains – the last sign of what we once thought defined a painting.

Artist and Contributor Bios Meg Lipke (b. 1969, Portland, OR) was raised in Burlington, Vermont and spent summers with her mother’s family in Cheshire, England. For more than two decades, Lipke has been creating innovative and remarkable paintings

that reinvigorate the possibilities of contemporary abstraction. She has been featured in solo shows at Jeff Bailey Gallery Hudson, New York (2015); Freight and Volume, New York, New York (2018 and 2016); and most recently at Broadway, New York, New York (2020). She received her BA in Art from the University of Vermont, and MFA in Painting from Cornell University. Lipke has taught at SUNY Albany, Cornell University, and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been reviewed in Art in America, The Village Voice, New York Times, Art Forum and many online publications. Lipke’s work is held in private collections in Los Angeles, New York City, Kansas City, Paris, London, and the Ahmanson Collection in Irvine. In 2019, she began experimenting with interactive works and collaborating with dancers and performers, including Unus Mundi: Survival Ceremonies, a collaborative performance between dance choreographer Julia Gleich of Gleich Dances and Lipke, performed at the University of Buffalo Art Galleries. She lives and works in Chatham, NY, and is currently represented by Broadway Gallery, New York.

Margot Norton is Curator at the New Museum, New York. She is currently working on a survey exhibition of the work of Lynn Hershman Leeson and the 2021 edition of the New Museum Triennial, co-curated with Jamillah James.

Norton joined the New Museum in 2011 and has curated and co-curated exhibitions with Carmen Argote, Judith Bernstein, Diedrick Brackens, Pia Camil, Sarah Charlesworth, Roberto Cuoghi, Ragnar Kjartansson, Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili, Goshka Macuga, Nathaniel Mellors, Laure Prouvost, Pipilotti Rist, Mika Rottenberg, Anri Sala, Kaari Upson, and Erika Vogt. Group exhibitions include: The Keeper; Here and Elsewhere; and NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. In October 2017, Norton curated Sequences VIII: Elastic Hours, the Eighth Sequences Real Time Art Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the Georgian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale with artist Anna K.E. Before joining the New Museum, Norton was a curatorial assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. She has contributed to and edited numerous publications and exhibition catalogues, and regularly lectures on contemporary art and curating. She holds a B.A. from University of Vermont and an M.A. in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University, New York.

Chelsea Spengemann is the Director of the Stan VanDerBeek Archive and has worked with the VanDerBeek family since 2008. As director of the Archive, Spengemann has overseen installations and acquisitions of VanDerBeek’s

work at the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, and the Walker Art Center, MN, among other international venues, while steadily working through restorations of numerous VanDerBeek films. In 2019, Spengemann co-curated VanDerBeek + VanDerBeek at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, NC and co-founded AFELL (Artist Foundation and Estate Leaders List), an organization of directors for artists’ estates. She was the curator of Becoming Disfarmer in 2014 and the Instant as Image in 2016 for the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase and FLOAT at Socrates Sculpture Park in 2009. Her writing has appeared in Afterimage, Affidavit, and Art Journal Open. She recently started a cooperative arts programming platform called soft network with Sara VanDerBeek. She holds a M.A. in Art History from Purchase College, NY, and an M.F.A in Photography from ICP/Bard College, NY.

Heather Ferrell is Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Burlington City Arts, Vermont. She joined BCA in 2016, and since that time has curated numerous exhibitions including Diana Al-Hadid: Immaterial; Sarah Amos: Unique Multiples;

Transcendent: Spirituality and Contemporary Art, and most recently Meg Lipke: In the Making. Over the course of her career she also organized and curated solo and groups shows including: Mathew Barney: Cremaster I; James Castle: An Individual Approach; Pat Steir: Waterfall Paintings, A Changing Fabric: Hildur Bjarnadóttir, Nick Cave, Jessica Rankin, and Jil Weinstock; Jon Rappleye: Strange World; Melissa Ann Pinney: Girl Ascending; and All American: Defining Ourselves in a Time of Change. Before joining Burlington City Arts, Ferrell was Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Programs, National Museum of Qatar, and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Director/Curator, Salt Lake Art Center, Utah, and Salina Art Center, Kansas; and Assoc. Curator of Art, Boise Art Museum, Idaho. She earned her M.A. in Art History from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio; and is a graduate of the Getty Leadership Institute’s Museum Leaders: The Next Generation (2004).

Curator/Director of Exhibitions Heather Ferrell Curatorial Assistant Colin Storrs Design Ted Olson Copy Editor Dr. Sarah Rogers Photography Sam Simon / Adam Reich

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