work in progress, fall 2012

A few entries back I posted about some of the Lenore Tawney materials I received, and that I would soon be making an embroidery piece with the small round boxes. Here are a couple of images, captured by the lovely Zoë Bare, taken during the opening of our work in progress exhibition on October 19th. I will be reworking the installation, and future exhibitions will no longer include the shelf - all of the pieces will be meant for the wall from now on. 

This time I'll carry these with me. (after Lenore Tawney)

boxes owned by Tawney, silk thread, linen

Here are a couple of more images of my work from the work in progress exhibition, these images taken by Sean Whener.

After the sun burned her eyes she found her way.

A new piece, shown here in progress. 

Once the wondrous vastness filled us (Comet of Coggia, 1874),

Now we fill the wondrous vastness (Trackable Space Debris, 2012).

This piece is currently taking up the majority of my time and energy, as I am finally creating my first-ever embroidery animation. I cannot wait to finish it and share it with you! 

 Lastly I would like to share my excitement that my piece showing at the Center for Contemporary Art, from them or you or the stars and their voices, was awarded third place! Thank you very much to the juror, Edwin Ramoran.

Manual Autonomy: Mary Smull

This past Thursday was the opening reception for the show my friend Sarah Hulsey and I curated - a solo exhibition of the needlepoint work of artist Mary Smull. Her gallery talk was presented in a question and answer format, with Sarah and I having a conversation with her about her work. I can hardly describe to you how happy we both were to share Mary's work with the UArts community, and to share in this experience with Mary. Please take a moment to look through her website to study her amazing work further.

Thank you to the UArts Alumni Association for their generous funding of the exhibition and event, to our professor Julianna Foster who guided us along the way and suggested Mary's work to us in the first place, to our professor Mary Phelan for accepting our proposal for the gallery space, and to everyone who made it out for the reception!

All photos taken by our friend and classmate, Kunyoung Chang. Thanks, Kunyoung!

Manual Autonomy: Mary Smull

My good friend and colleague Sarah Hulsey and I are curating and mounting an exhibition of the work of fiber artist Mary Smull! I am so excited to share with you the press release for this imminent exhibition.

Manual Autonomy, Mary Smull

Anderson Hall, 6th floor gallery

University of the Arts

333 South Broad Street

Philadelphia, PA 19107

EXHIBITION DATES: October 29 – November 16, 2012 ,

                                         Mon. – Fri. 8:30am – 4:00 pm and by appointment

OPENING RECEPTION: 5:30 – 7:30pm, Thursday, November 1, 2012

GALLERY TALK: Mary Smull, 6:00pm, Thursday, November 1, 2012

Philadelphia, PA – Anderson Hall, 6th floor gallery at the University of the Arts is pleased to

announce an exhibition by alumna Mary Smull.

Manual Autonomy presents two rule‐based needlepoint projects by Philadelphia artist Mary Smull. These works take needlepoint craft kits and deliberately subvert many of the original intensions of the kit, exploring the complicated relationship between hobbyist craft and fine art.

In the series Conceptual Needlepoint, Smull accepts the constraints of a needlepoint kit’s provided colors, but defies the kit’s intentions by formulating her own rules for the application of the colors, thus turning a prescribed pattern into an exploration of autonomy. In Finished Works Smull beings with abandoned, partially finished needlepoint projects, and then completes them — but using only white thread. These pieces preserve the structure of the original intension, but result in images full of hiatuses and encroaching blank fields.

Mary Smull holds a BFA from the University of the Arts in Fibers/Craft and an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Smull’s work has been exhibited recently at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft; Public Fiction, Los Angeles, CA; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Her project SPUN: Society for the Prevention of Unfinished Needlepoint was recently presented at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in conjunction with the exhibition Craft Spoken Here. She teaches in the Fiber Department at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD.

Curated by Sarah Hulsey and Erin Paulson, MFA Book Arts/Printmaking candidates 2013.

Contact: Erin Paulson email: jpaulson@uarts.edu

High resolution images are available upon request.

Generously funded by the University of the Arts Alumni Association.

Exhibitions

This past Friday was the opening reception for our Works in Progress Exhibition at UArts. Thank you so much to everyone who made it out, it was wonderful to see all of you!

I will photograph the show and share the work by myself and my talented classmates at some point this week, so stay tuned.

Also, I wanted to share that my work will be included in two more exhibitions!


My pieces I was screaming and no one could hear. and what is otherwise lost will be included in the Modest in Scale exhibition at the Abecedarian Gallery in Denver, Colorado.
There will be a reception on November 15, from 6 - 8 pm, and the exhibition will run through December 15th.


My piece After the sun burned her eyes she found her way has been accepted to Craft Forms 2012 at the Wayne Art Center in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
There will be a preview party on Friday, November 30 from 6 - 10 pm, and the exhibition will run through January 26th.

Lenore Tawney

Some of you may know that Lenore Tawney has been one of my favorite artists since I was first studying fiber art. Amazingly, this year, 5 years after her death, the Lenore Tawney foundation has donated much of the materials from her studio to students at UArts and MICA.
Us book arts grads were fortunate enough to share in this gift! We are meant to create work with Lenore's materials for an exhibition that will take place at the end of the year in conjunction with exhibitions of her work here at UArts and at MICA.

I have been quietly working away on some embroideries greatly inspired by Lenore's work to be housed in the following miniature boxes I received. Each is only 1 1/4" in diameter. These will be seen in our Work in Progress show, the opening for which is October 19th. More info on that later!

I also received this odd wooden piece, which after discussion with one of my advisors I now realize was a device to form cigars. There must have been an original adjoining female piece. I'm not sure what I will do with this yet, but I'm really transfixed by the landscape nature of the cracked line running across it.

 

This is a beautiful book on chemistry from (just a guess) the late 19th century. It has fantastic diagrams inside and that fabulous poetic language so often formerly employed to discuss science.

Look at that marbled edge!

There are several pages where someone, possibly Lenore, wrote the page number in ink, as well as making other notations.

Center for Contemporary Art

I am excited to share that my piece from them or you or the stars and their voices has been accepted to a juried show at the Center for Contemporary Art in New Jersey!

The show will be up from November 2 - December 15, with an opening reception on Friday, November 2nd from 6-8 pm. 

THE CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART

2020 Burnt Mills Rd., Bedminster, NJ 07921

(908) 234-2345

Email: info @ccabedminster.org

Web site: www.ccabedminstert.org

I made this at PBI! (continued)

At the Paper and Book Intensive in Ox-bow this past May, I also took tool making with Shanna Leino, where we learned to make our own bookbinding tools out of elk bone, and also stamping tools out of steel. I fell in love with the elk bone process, and probably would have been perfectly content to make tools the entire two weeks. These are some of the tools I completed; I had two more awls, but I have already given them to much deserving recipients as thank you gifts. The tool on the right I think I'll use as an awl specifically for punching leather; the end is quite sharp. 

My third class at PBI was paper marbling with Steve Pittelkow. He is a superb marbler and I came home with about 40 sheets that I had marbled myself, which is wonderful. I'm excited to use them in our bookbinding homework over the next school year! These are a few of my favorites that I produced.

And I'll conclude this post with some of my favorite images from PBI. 

A poem...

by Mary Elizabeth Frye.

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sun on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circling flight.

I am the soft star-shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die.

Golgulsa Temple Stay

As part of our trip to Seoul, we spent a couple of days in a coastal town named Gyeong-Ju. This was one of my favorite parts of the trip, as it included not only seeing wonderful temples from the Silla dynasty, but also a temple stay at a Buddhist temple, Golgulsa. 

I had read about similar experiences, but never dreamt that I would get to experience something like this myself. The temple was so beautiful, and I felt such reverence for the place, that I did not take a single photo the entire time we were there. We were in bed by 10 pm, and awoken at 4 in the morning to walk up an incredibly steep hill for morning chants, followed by walking meditation and a timed breakfast ceremony. A few of us made the treacherous trek up the rocky steps of the mountain to see the Buddha carved into the mountain from the 5th century. 

Fortunately, one of our tour guides, Semi, was photographing the whole time! Thanks so much to Semi for sharing the photos with all of us, they are a treasure. 

Receiving our first instructions on the temple-stay experience!

Walking to dinner in our new temple-stay togs.

 Mary, Kunyoung, and I were very pleased about something.

 In line for our first meal experience.

 Kunyoung and Victoria choosing their food for dinner (although the food for breakfast was very similar). We learned a lot about choosing appropriate portions because it was a disgrace to waste any food.

Victoria with one of the cutest puppies of all time.

Our introduction to our Seonmudo training.

I love Katherine's face here.

 Right before the beginning of our evening chants and Seonmudo.... we really had no idea what was in store!

The way to the 5th century Buddha.

The view of the Buddha after the nerve-wracking climb had paid off! Photo by Victoria Marcetti.

The temple-stay was one of my absolute favorite experiences during our trip to South Korea. Sitting underneath that Buddha and feeling as though I was at the edge of the world... it was an experience I will never forget.