Queer & Peculiar Craft @ Abrazo Interno Gallery

I grew up believing that art making was a part of the “Arts & Crafts” category. I didn’t go to art school and I wasn’t exposed to the ‘Contemporary Art World’ until I was an adult and moved to NYC. For many of us, art making is always craft, a hobby that deepens, a kinetic fixation. So it was exciting to be a part of this group exhibition of artists who have a close physical connection with their material for creative expression. Most of the artists in this show work in ceramics, a medium I’m hoping to explore more of, but my contribution were textile banners that I’ve made from sports jerseys and reworked discarded commercial advertisements.

From the curator, Andrew Cornell Robinson

The exhibition, Queer and Peculiar Craft presents an inter-sectional group of artists each of whom have a unique visual language composed of cast-off histories and unexpected applications of craft materials. Artists: Koren Christofides, Greg Climer, Roxanne Jackson, Brian Kenny, Edmund Green Langdell, Phoenix Lindsey-Hall, Vick Quezada, Timo Rissanen, Andrew Cornell Robinson, Juana Valdes, and Lu Zhang.

The makers in this exhibition employ craft strategies in order to give voice to their search for personal and cultural identity in contrast to imposed standards of normalcy. Yet when these new voices, and visual languages push the boundaries of an accepted norm, they are seen as other, as strange, queer and peculiar. These artists each have an uncanny ability to find their voice by expanding the boundaries of cultural traditions. Their approach to craft materials expand techniques with long histories, such as transfer-ware, slump molding, relief modeling, slip-casting, pottery, quilting, cross stitching, enamels, and printmaking, among other media.

The implication of queer peculiarity applied to the construction of otherness offers a simultaneous burden and an opportunity for each of these artists who come to their work with unique lived experiences and perspectives. These makers explore how making and meaning provide unique points of view on queer aesthetics, feminism, and explorations of identity in relationship to place, culture and history. The works included in this queer and peculiar exhibition ask how we might imagine, make, live and see differently.

Queer and Peculiar Craft showcases an inter-sectional group of artists who explore craft to transgress expectations of traditional materials, methods, and meaning. Artists included in this exhibition each have an uncanny ability to find their voice by expanding the boundaries of cultural traditions. Their craft strategies expand techniques with long histories, such as pottery, quilting, cross stitching, needle felting, crochet, and printmaking, among other media. These makers explore how making and meaning provide unique perspectives on queer aesthetics, feminism, and explorations of identity in relationship to place, culture and history. 

Artists: Koren Christofides, Greg Climer, Roxanne Jackson, Brian Kenny, Edmund Langdell, Phoenix Lindsey-Hall, Vick Quezada, Timo Rissanen, Andrew Cornell Robinson, Juana Valdes, and Lu Zhang. 

The Clemente Abrazo Interno Gallery 107 Suffolk Street, New York, NY 10002. www.theclementecenter.org
Dec 5, 2019 through Jan 18, 2020. On view Wed - Sun 12-7pm.

www.theclementecenter.org

http://acrstudio.com/queer-and-peculiar-craft.html

The Age of Voltaire: Murals at the new M3 Hotel in Geneva.

I was honored to have the opportunity in September of 2019 to grace the lobby windows and walls of the new M3 Hotel in Ferney-Voltaire, just outside Geneva, with an expansive freehand ‘automatic’ mural in my signature line-drawing style. As with all of my murals, I wanted this project to reflect the energy and history of the location, and so I chose to focus on a tremendously influential resident of the area from the 18th century, Voltaire, as well as his close circle of peers and of course include visions of local flora, fauna and furniture.  Not only would this theme be site specific, but also connect to an existing neon light installation suspended high in the lobby’s atrium that features the names of Voltaire and his friends in bright colors.  

The mural was created in two parts, one in yellow acrylic paint marker on a wall of windows looking out into a garden passage, and the other, in pink acrylic paint marker on the opposite interior wall that features small mobile desks with plugs and wifi. 

The interior pink mural, composed of complex, interwoven line drawings, features prominent portraits of Voltaire and his friend and colleague Emilie du Chatelet. In Voltaire’s left hand is a book with a bouquet of flowers exploding outward to represent the sense of enlightenment in Voltaire’s writing and philosophy. In his right hand he is holding a skull as he was a thinker, and a man of Science.  Next to his shoulder sits his pet canary. Emilie Du Chatelet, drawn with hair piled high with flowers and butterflies, is seen holding dividers in her left hand as she was a mathematician and holding a portrait of Sir Isaac Newton in her right arm as she was also a famed physicist and the first to translate Newton’s original works into French. Surrounding Voltaire and Emilie are images of what the Chateau of Voltaire may have looked like; gorgeous chandeliers, candelabras, vases and piles of books scattered about among writing quills, feathers, bouquets of flowers filling the space while a cat plays, a dog sleeps and butterflies, fill the air.

The yellow mural on the opposite wall of windows looking out into the green foliage beyond features portraits of Marie Louise Mignot (Madame Denis), the niece (and secret lover) of Voltaire and the artist Jean Etienne Liotard. Surrounding the portraits is a vast display of plants and animals that are native to France and Switzerland. If you look carefully, you can see an Alpine Ibex, and Lynx, the Swiss national bird the Turaco, or its flower, the Edelweiss. I also added in a bit of creative fantasy for good measure, like a mythical beast that is half-deef, half-phoenix and a little frog riding atop a squirrel.

Both murals also include an array of my own favorite artistic symbols, particularly hands and teeth. Teeth are a re-occurring symbol throughout my artwork as a kind of grounding human totem, or signature. Teeth are our bones on display, an elemental part of each us that is used in the highest form of expression like language, and the most basic, like eating. They are the last part of us to decay and often the only way to confirm our existence after we have died.  Thus, I use them throughout the mural as a kind of decoration of our collective human energy and presence. In regards to hands, beyond just loving to draw them, I also believe them to be a great relatable way to express distinct human emotions, styles, ideas and connections to others and other things. They represent both the people I’ve made portraits and of the viewers of the mural as vicarious participants in the visual panorama. 

Fashion Fast Forward; a mural for J. Crew in NYC.

Recently over one hot weekend in July I completed a freehand ‘automatic’ mural for J.Crew in collaboration with VM Architecture and Design celebrating human creativity, diversity and collaboration at their sparkling new corporate headquarters in downtown Manhattan. To achieve this I create a line drawing tapestry of interwovens drawings of working and helping hands, tools of the fashion trade like pencils, needles and thread, scissors and measuring tape, fashionable items like heels, sunglasses an imaginative array of flora and fauna like peacocks, sunflowers and hummingbirds. The result is a modern fluid lace that sparks the imagination and delights the eye.

I used a GoPro to capture the mural’s creation in a quick timelapse