Installation view of Materiality Re_Mined; Deep Within the Screen of a Cell Phone
features an installation by two artists
Opening Reception: July 10th with a conversation between the artists at 3:00pm followed by a reception from 4 - 6pm.
At the Seager Gray Gallery in MillValley and on view till the end of July.
Gallery Address and info.
Image from the film, The Bookmakers. Yes, sitting in the audience at one of the presentations at Codex.
So if we have good communication,
I tried and now I see it’s been many months since my last post. A challenging year filled with uncertainty, living through a pandemic, fire season & evacuees, racial injustices and an election many will not forget.
I found solace entering my studio each day. Slowing down with fewer distractions revealed unexpected silver linings such as unstructured time to listen beyond the projects in front of me. To echoes from previous experiences for example, remembering a residency six years ago at Haystack in Maine, where I discovered two useful tools, a scroll saw and a laser cutter, that would enable me to further develop cuttings. I purchased a scroll saw upon my return knowing how I wanted to use it. The laser cutter was a bigger investment and one I didn’t make since I wasn’t as sure about its usefulness. I did investigate places where I might rent one, if the need became apparent.
What I didn’t expect was one coming to me during this auspicious time, from my son whose employer had two sitting around not being used. And my need had become apparent as I was working with plexiglass on a collaborative project with Catherine Richardson, Materiality Re_Mined; The Cell Phone Looking at Itself, scheduled to be exhibited at the Seager Gray Gallery in July of 2021.
Look for more on this exhibition in posts to follow in 2021. And yes, the laser cutter was invaluable.
One of our collaborative pieces to be titled (by Brooke Holve & Catherine Richardson) using a laser cutter.
It’s already been two months since my return from Cill Rialaig, the artist retreat on the Iveragh Peninsula of County Kerry Ireland.
I went with artist, Catherine Richardson, to collaborate on Materiality, Re_Mined, a project we initiated in response to the call for action proposed in Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss. The event slated for 2021, envisions worldwide participation and simultaneous showing of artists from around the world concerned about how “We are recklessly modifying every feature of the planet surfaces.”
We mostly worked independently guided by our own inspirations and impressions of the place except when we took field trips to mines and quarries in the area.
In those two months since my return, I have been working with some of the materials of Cill Rialaig that I discovered—as it was an unfamiliar source place with its own unique aura seeped in a difficult history with remains and remnants of a time.
My hope was to extract from what was there. What were those materials of this place that spoke to me?
With a predilection toward stones and wind worn landscapes, I was at home surrounded by stones & rocks—the cottages, boundary walls, ruins, standing stones. A spectacularly beautiful place with memories in these stones—trace fossils that marked a past.
If the stones could talk, what would they say?
No words but textures to touch and feel. In preparation for this residency, I extracted pages from mining books. Here I found a place to use them by backing them with wheat paste and using the rock shapes from the wall to mold them. The stone wall shaped the pages and held the art.
Trying to keep warm in a cold place:
At Cill Rialaig, a prefamine village with 19th century ambiance, I was far from the world I knew without the distractions of the 21st century—internet, iPhone, daily news.
Instead I was preoccupied with keeping warm. No central heating, no insulation and cold stone walls & a slate ceiling. The turf eater (an Irish term for the wood stove) became my focus as it consumed the peat, the fuel used here. Discovering that peat was so fast burning, I found that the stove required vigilant attending to ensure uninterrupted warmth.
I went through many bags of peat and accumulated many pails of ash. So it became a material to experiment with in its various forms of brick, charcoal, ash and ink.