What is my work about?
My work is a material surrogate for pain, loss, and sexuality as it appears on the body. This investigation sits between the space of painting and sculpture as experiences once felt physically are remembered as images. The tension and uncomfortable nature of growth, of struggle, and of seduction hide in black surfaces as much as they emerge from them. While some pieces articulate a moment, others are layered over time, morphing into their forms through material processes such as melting, burning, molding, and shrouding.
My work is born from desperation to discern my own experiences of illness, a degrading body, a loss of sex, and the reformation of the other presented to the self. My search is for an understanding of this pain through the visible and physical remnants left behind from the struggle.
Artist Statement
Black serves a purpose in the work so far as it negates a color world and causes a more heightened attention to material. It is used to both draw attention to and take attention away from the intimate and seductive qualities of forms pushing against each other. Black also functions colloquially, becoming a reference to death, mourning, emptiness, and the unknown.
Each piece exists to me as an entry point: a hole, a scar, or an orifice. These points become remembered as physiological spaces of anxiety, of fear, and of pressure. Some are grotesque, others sexy, drawing you in and pushing you away. What exists and yearns to be hidden – what is presented and begs for attention – these intimate moments of grief and triumph are expressed through the formation of surfaces and the molding of forms.
The variability of material choices and scale is important in the work as it serves to demonstrate degrees in which tension is felt: some continuing to move, others to be weighted down by pressure, some stable, and others empty. Some pieces directly articulate a torso or a spine while others are taken out of their 1:1 ratio to the body in order to express an amplified or intimate moment: smaller than or larger than the body part itself.
Although isolated pieces can stand on their own, my studio practice aims to create a world in which intimate actions of struggle are repeated or rediscovered through an understanding of materials. Stretched and sewn, warped and molded, allowing their actions to be both understood as definitive or thought of with the possibility that the forms could once again be re-formed – pushed farther – continue to evolve and grow. In this way my studio practice does not hold to one material or medium but rather is born from a series of investigations – taking a new form of understanding once a substrate or surface is discovered.
CV
Education
2012 Yale University, New Haven, CT, MFA Painting/Printmaking
2009 Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, BA, Studio Art, High Honors
2007-2008 GLCA New York Arts Program
Visual Arts Experience
2013 Gallery Assistant, Studio Vendome, New York, NY
2012 Artist Assistant, Michaelene Thomas Studios, Brooklyn, NY
2010-2012 Print shop Monitor, Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT
2006-2009 Co Founder: Reinstein screen-printing, Oberlin, Oh
2008-2009 Studio assistant, Oberlin, oh and Istanbul, turkey
2007-2008 Intern: lower east side print shop, new York, ny 2007-2008
Teaching experience
2014 Mono-printing Instructor, 92nd Street Y, New York, NY
2011 TA, basic drawing, yale school of art, new haven, ct
2011 TA, painting & printmaking, yale Norfolk summer program, Norfolk ct
2008-2009 TA, silkscreen, Oberlin college, Oberlin, oh
Public collections
Allen memorial art museum, Oberlin, oh
Aicuo arts center, Cincinnati, oh
Grants and awards
2009 Aicuo Art Award Grand Prize winner
2011 YALE Norfolk Teaching fellow
Selected Exhibitions
2014
It’s a Yale Thing, Nnamdi Center for Contemporary Art, Detroit, Mi
paintingwall (janus at 8:16), touch gallery, Cambridge, ma
2013
what to do?, Brooklyn, ny
the milk shed show, west Newbury, ma
2012
eyes off the flag, motus fort gallery, Tokyo, japan
lotte arts group exhibition, lotte arts, san Francisco, ca
thing: an outdoor sculpture show, Cornwall, ct
yale school of art thesis exhibition, Green gallery, new haven, ct
2011
Norfolk staff exhibition, yale Norfolk program, Norfolk, ct
Painting/printmaking 2nd year show, green gallery, new haven, ct
2010
First year MFA exhibition, green gallery, new haven, ct
2009
Senior studio and thesis, fisher gallery, Oberlin, oh
Senior art exhibition, allen memorial art building, Oberlin, oh
Culminations: group studio expo, Oberlin, oh
16mm exco screening, Oberlin, oh
Sound and Image, Oberlin, oh
Art walk, Oberlin, oh
Translation and Conversion, play gallery, Istanbul, turkey
Proteus, fisher gallery, Oberlin, oh
2008
Abstract individuals, hales gymnasium, Oberlin, oh
Senior thesis halfway, fisher gallery, Oberlin, oh
Nature of the abstract, 145 north main street, Oberlin, oh
2007
Fine arts expo, Fisher Gallery, Oberlin, OH
Lovis Dies, Lovis Dies collective, Oberlin, OH
Art Walk, Oberlin, OH
Bibliography
Higher Education at Nnamdi Center for Contemporary Art: Do the Yale Thing, knightarts.org, 2014
Textile, Texture, and Paint at 1717 Troutman, Arts in Bushwick, Susan Surrace, 2013
Not your grandmothers art show, out of order magazine, jane fisher 2012
Aicou art award, Georgia state review, 2009
Amy Giovanna Rinaldi / misha Davidoff, The Oberlin Review, 2009
Publications
Draw it with your Eyes Closed: the art of the art assignment, paper monument, published assignment under artist Rochelle Feinstein 2012