SMOTHER, STICK, CUT, COLLECT: VERNACULAR SUMS AND MATERIAL MYTHOLOGIES
THE ARNO MARIS GALLERY WESTFIELD STATE UNIVERSITY Presents Smother, Stick, Cut, Collect: Vernacular Sums and Material Mythologies March 20th – April 21st, 2018 Reception: March 21, 4:00 – 6:00 Featuring the art work of Angela Zamarelli Alicia Renadette Sooo-s Mastropietro Manju Shandler Colleen McCubbin Stepanic Damali Abrams
The Arno Maris Gallery at Westfield State University presents a group exhibition during women’s history month. This show includes a selection of artists for whom materials act as a kind of language to address personal and/or cultural mythologies, observations and behaviors. In recognition of Women’s History Month 2018 at the Arno Maris Gallery at Westfield State University, a selection of six contemporary artists from New York City, Philadelphia and New England were invited to share work in the space. Working with mostly non-traditional, unique methods, there are contextual threads that weave through these artists’ works and inspire a desire to see them in proximity to one another. Each artist has a unique sculptural language, incorporates a collage practice as part of their art making process and uses repetition in their work. The artists in Smother Stick Cut Collect’s visual languages emerges out of a sort of accumulation of material or imagery. In some instances, this consists of an artist creating materials/components and subsequently cutting and re-forming these to construct a final iteration of the work. Others are making objects as a kind of ritualistic gesture, creating a temporal history informing the experience of the final piece. Many are using objects, found imagery and materials that historically signify a kind of cultural mythology. In some works, the material symbolism is dealing with contemporary consumer habits around social traditions or personal identity roles. For each artist, the act of repetition is clearly employed as a part of the labor process and in many instances, is a part of the visual expression or impact of their works. The engagement of repetition in art is part of a long-standing tradition in art and craft making processes and has been widely addressed in post-modern and contemporary theory and critical thought. In recognition of Women’s History Month, the artists in this exhibition are all women. Each of these artists make work that in some way relate to political and social observations or practices potentially inherent in the experience of being a woman. While certain works may not pointedly address this, there is arguably a relational context, and many employ modes of labor historically associated with women. It is our hope that the work in this exhibition will surprise and inspire dialogue for students, faculty and audiences from various backgrounds and disciplines. Perhaps part of the dialogue that these artists works might provoke is a conversation about perspectives associated with gendered notions of women and art and what it means to honor Women’s History Month with these artists works. The following are samples of their work.
Sooo-z Mastropietro As a multi media artist, I gather inspiration through a mĂŠlange of synergistic creative forces and harness its potential through spirited experimentation and calculated execution. Once there is a homogeneous balance of intrigue, pun, and theory, a momentum of artistic inertia is released. Through revisiting a familiar medium in fiber, I am liberated by the formulaic variety that my specific iteration allows me. The creation of sub-mediums within my language of tubes, nuggets, and shreds allows for pattern, structure, texture, form, and depth. These are the physical characteristics I compose with while always striving to feed off irony, infuse humor, or a textile-related theme. The medium I have created innately presents parameters and guidelines from which I am able to develop unlimited variety. Ultimately, t his medium under individual terms represent the parts of the sum which inevitably become the sum of bigger parts. My goal is to achieve infinite boundaries with a finite form.
Chimaerrow
Monochromania
Pile, Perplexity, Indubitable, Laminosa, Exploit, Fiber
Boob Tube
Bachanal
COLLEEN MCCUBBIN STEPANIC Artist Statement 2017 I use geological references as a starting point for tactile, abstract works that are created from painted canvas. My interest in the parallels I experience between geological processes and human experience drives my practice. I draw links between the ways in which earth is built up, saved, and destroyed, (sediment, erosion, and earthquake) and the way our own life events are similarly built up, saved and destroyed (accumulating personal experiences, flawed memories, and unsettling life events.) My painting explores the possibilities of physically representing these experiences. In doing so I disregard the flat plain and engage in a number of aggressive actions against the basic fiber of painting. I cut and rip apart canvases. I attack the surface with paint, with scissors, and with thread. Though my work I explore painting in its ability to make connections and allow disparate thoughts and experiences to mingle amongst each other. Pulling from the world around me, I aim to create a microcosm into which both maker and viewer are able to venture. My work throws together painting, craft, and elements of the domestic, fusing together outsider art practices with conventional painting techniques installed in the manner of contemporary art installation.
Peak
Alicia Renadette Like an interloper waist-deep in the trappings of middle-class America, I revel and flail in a culture I can barely comprehend. Compelled to witness and participate in bizarre spectacles which often confuse hi-jacked pageantry with heartfelt ritual, convenience with freedom, and instant-gratification with catharsis, I am skeptical of being swept along into many traditional festivities. It’s easy to doubt the sincerity in gestures that typically rely on consumerbased pageantry to compensate for abuse or mask trauma….and YET…I find myself utterly seduced by the grand displays, trinkets and ephemera and I want to believe at their core is an acknowledgement of truly hungering for joyful moments and glittering memories. In my work, I clash discarded toys and decorations with hygienic implements and household textiles. I stage absurd configurations that explore themes of traumatic memory, holiday rituals and domestic fantasy. Often, this takes the form of an altar, a trophy or a biomorphic form in flux. Lush color pallets with saccharine frills and decorations are like my siren’s call. I lure the viewer a sweet visual treat. It’s a polychromatic bribe of sorts. The sugar high is disrupted slightly when, on closer inspection, small acts of torture are noticed. Familiar objects are shown to have been dismembered, mutated, bound, stabbed repeatedly with small swords, or mounted as a hunting souvenir. The futility of these desperate actions against mute objects is intentionally humorous and, in so being, also a bit sad.
Smaller - They Found Me
Don’t Go Chasin’ Waterfalls
Homesick
Manju Shandler My narrative art houses symbolic references to our contemporary landscape. Building upon established storylines and fables my mixed media artworks create a richly layered reflection of our dense and complicated times. I am often fascinated with how humanity’s hunger for fuel shapes societies. The large mixed media pieces included in Smother, Stick, Cut, Collect references chickens, eggs, and nests in relationship to colonialism, slavery, and the industrialization of natural resources.
Texture 3
Texture 2
Texture
Texture 4
Angela Zammarelli My work hovers around the intersection of fantasy and reality. How do the fantastical elements call upon reality to give them meaning? And how observations in reality can slip into the fantastical just by a certain framing. I like to use textiles and cardboard to construct structures that call back to childhood. But the inhabitants have not been children for a long time. The structures are used to house idiosyncratic objects and imagery particular to characters I am working with in my studio narrative.
Believe in Our Dreams
Panorama
Ghostmaker’s Habitat, You Are Always Welcome
Damali Abrams Damali Abrams the Glitter Priestess is a project-based artist, born and raised in NYC by Guyanese parents. She constructs spaces and experiences of fantasy and myth, using collage, video installation and performance, that explore Black Utopia through the lenses of Afrofuturism and AfroCaribbean syncretic religions. She examines folklore and contemporary popular culture, placing them in dialogue with one another to create a site of liberation for the Black imagination, rejecting tragedy as the sole, dominant narrative of the Black experience. Damali’s work includes video, performance, installation, and collage. She earned a BA at NYU, an MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and recently completed the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. She has been a fellow at A.I.R. Gallery as well as with apexart in Seoul, South Korea. She has been an artist-in- residence at Fresh Milk (Barbados), Groundation Grenada, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, The Center for Book Arts, and LMCC on Governors Island. In New York City, her work has been exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA), A.I.R. Gallery, JCAL, Rush Arts Gallery, The Point, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, BRIC Rotunda Gallery, and the 2013 bienal at El Museo del Barrio. She has presented her work or taught workshops at Soho House, BMCC (Borough of Manhattan Community College), SUNY Purchase, Barbados Community College, NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, Hunter College School of Social Work, and Syracuse University’s 601 Tully.
Damali Abrams glitterpriestess.com
Glitter Priestess Video Still