74
MAKE DO

MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

  • Upload
    others

  • View
    0

  • Download
    0

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

MAKE DO

Page 2: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 3: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

MAKE/DO: Contemporary Artists Perform Craft

Erin Dunn Rosemarie Fiore

Alejandro Guzman Emily Noelle Lambert

Saya Woofalk

curated by Lauren Rosati

University of Massachusetts, AmherstWestern Michigan University

Page 4: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 5: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

CONTENTS

5 Foreword Amanda Tiller6 The Make-Up of Make/Do Lauren Rosati ARTISTS Lauren Rosati11 Rosemarie Fiore 25 Emily Noelle Lambert37 Alejandro Guzman45 Erin Dunn55 Saya Woolfalk

64 Endnotes66 Exhibition Checklist68 Acknowledgments70 NYPOP

Page 6: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 7: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

5

FOREWORDFor the past twenty years, the mission of the New York Professional Outreach Program (NYPOP) has been to introduce university students to the professional art world in New York, with the purpose of their learning how to begin a career in the profession. We have visited the studios of hundreds of artists, and met with dozens of curators and gallerists, giving students an inside perspective into the multiple challenges and rewards of a career in visual art.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in NYPOP as a graduate student and credit the program with giving me the courage and con!dence to move to New York a"er graduation to pursue my art career. During my time in the program we met with a variety of artists — from “art stars” like Kiki Smith and Andres Serrano, to emerging artists just a few years out of school. While it was an amazing experience to sit down and meet with the established artists I had studied, it was the conversations with the younger emerging artists that inspired me, a girl from small-town Tennessee, to make the move to the city. Here were young artists, just a few years ahead of me, making a career and pursuing their dreams. It was a realistic possibility — that could be me.

#e NYPOP Exhibition Program was developed to continue our students’ engagement with New York’s emerging art scene once they return to campus. NYPOP’s curriculum is a continuous loop, ‘Bring Students to New York, and New York Back to Campus.’ To facilitate that goal, we are producing exhibitions featuring artists that students can relate to as contemporaries. One of NYPOP’s primary missions is to encourage students to begin thinking of themselves as artists, curators, writers, and gallerists – not just as students. To that end, these exhibitions reveal what their slightly older peers are currently creating in New York. #rough these exhibitions, even students who have not made a NYPOP trip can learn from the emerging art scene and see possibilities for their own futures.

#e New York Professional Outreach Program is very pleased to launch our annual traveling Exhibition Program, with MAKE/DO. Guest Curator, Lauren Rosati, has organized a very exciting exhibition that taps into one of the current trends among emerging New York artists. #e !ve artists in this exhibition have produced prime examples of the type of exciting work a young artist would encounter – right now – walking around the galleries of the Lower East Side or going to open studios in Brooklyn.

AMANDA TILLERAssistant Director of NYPOPDirector of Exhibition ProgramCollege of Humanities and Fine ArtsUniversity of Massachusetts - Amherst

Page 8: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

THE MAKE-UP OF MAKE/DO

Creation is performance.—Mikel Dufrenne1

It is perhaps the most famous image of an artist at work: a painter with an arm and leg extended angles towards a canvas on the $oor and $icks his wrist, leaving a skein of paint at his feet. Jackson Pollock’s unorthodox painting style, famously documented in both moving and still images by Hans Namuth in 1951, made visible the energy, movement, and intention of the artist and catapulted him to certain renown when Namuth’s photographs appeared as illustrations to Robert Goodnough’s essay in Art News, “Pollock Paints a Picture,” later that year.2 Pollock’s genius was further a%rmed and perpetuated through innumerable critical essays therea"er, perhaps most notably in Harold Rosenberg’s “American Action Painters” (1952). In that article, Rosenberg named Pollock’s dynamic approach “action painting,” and praised the artist’s reconsideration of the canvas as “an arena in which to act” rather than a mere surface.3 Nearly sixty years later, Namuth’s images and Rosenberg’s subsequent text remain critical art historical documents of Pollock’s painterly technique and the stylistic development of Abstract Expressionism. Yet they more potently illustrate the moment when the status of the artwork experienced a crucial shi": its meaning no longer resided only in its !nal, physical manifestation, but also in the process of its making.

6

LAUREN ROSATICurator

Page 9: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

7

#is transposition of meaning from product to process, from object to encounter, was ultimately foregrounded in the performative practices of the late-1950s and 1960s. #e Japanese Gutai Group was directly inspired by Pollock’s dance-like movements around his canvas and sought to emphasize the role of the body in artistic production. For instance, in a 1957 work that betrays its lineage to that “action” painter, Gutai member Kazuo Shiraga was suspended from the ceiling of an Osaka gallery space and kicked oil paint onto a sheet of paper on the $oor.4 Works such as this one underscore the notion that objects are animated by and contingent on the “act” of their creation. Other contemporaneous performance pieces, such as Yoko Ono’s famous Cut Piece (1965) and any number of the Fluxus Happenings, stressed the role of indeterminacy in shaping the !nal work and are remembered primarily through documentation rather than relics of the event.

#ese and other works of performance o"en result in the production of objects, some of which are intended to be viewed as individual works of art (in the case of Shiraga) and some of which are mere “residues” of the live act (as in the fabric remainders of Ono’s costume). Yet regardless of artistic intent, these static objects refer back to the active manipulation of space and the active body that !gured prominently in their creation. It is important to point out, however, that the “performative” does not refer to performance speci!cally, but designates a peculiar kind of engagement between the artist and artwork, in which the artist herself is an active and visible agent in the construction of the work and its meaning. #is can also extend, I would argue, to the viewer who, in looking at an artwork—from tracing the lines of a drawing to watching video documentation of an action—actually participates in “re-performing” its creation. Independent curator Maria Lind has also identi!ed curatorial practice, with its “elements of choreography, orchestration, and administrative logistics,” as performative.5

Page 10: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

8

#is “performative turn” has its conceptual and etymological origins in linguistics, speci!cally the publication of J.L. Austin’s in$uential philosophical tract “How to Do #ings with Words” (1962), which introduced the concept of a “performative utterance.” Arguing against the notion that speech results in categorical statements, Austin posited instead that “to say something is to do something.”6 #is had profound implications for artists who extended this concept to the realm of artistic production, demonstrating that to make something is to do something.

MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the notion of performativity through the realm of cra". Whether building mobile habitats constructed from discarded supplies or paintings and totems cra"ed from layers of pigment, wood, and paper, the artists in this exhibition knit, assemble, scatter, paint, edit, transform, and mold materials into objects that retain traces of their creation.7 Rather than making this visible through interactive or socially engaged forms—the video game, the website, delegated performance—the “performative” is rendered through cra" materials and techniques. #e works included in the show are notable for their materials (shoddy and select) and quality of production (scrupulous and slapdash), which collapse the distinction between !ne art and cra", and encourage us, as viewers, to participate in their re-production and reception, to their “making” and “doing.” What follows is a closer look at the !ve artists included in the exhibition.

Page 11: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 12: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 13: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

ROSEMARIE FIORE

#e radiant plumes and so" arcs of color in Rosemarie Fiore’s works belie their source. Produced using commercial !reworks—which are either gently maneuvered, creating paths of swirling color, or carefully contained, producing solid circular forms—her work e&ectively performs itself. Fiore’s pieces are produced through a complex process of stasis and movement, cause and e&ect. For her “Firework Drawings” (and they are in fact drawings, comprised of pigment on paper), the artist uses an airborne material and literally grounds it, capturing the explosion in a co&ee tin; for her more recent “Smoke Paintings,” she funnels the !rework’s smoke and dye through a nozzle on one of several reusable, rolling devices cra"ed especially for this purpose. While indeterminate e&ects are inevitable, Fiore is in complete control of her medium. Portions of her works are meticulously collaged, a build-up of pyrotechnic bursts, while others are le" alone, as when the sulfuric smear of a spent fuse is allowed to leave its mark. It can be said that the artist collaborates with objects to produce events. Indeed, the artist conceives of these projects as performances, the result of a process of mediation between the “inhuman mark” of a !recracker and the paper’s surface.8

11

Page 14: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

12

ROSEMAIRE FIORESmoke Painting #38 2013

50 x 60 inches© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Page 15: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 16: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

14

ROSEMAIRE FIOREFirework Drawing #61 2011

82 x 69.75 inches© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Page 17: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 18: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

16

ROSEMAIRE FIOREFirework Drawing #68 2011

61 x 82.5 inches© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Page 19: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 20: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

18

ROSEMAIRE FIOREFirework Drawing #23 2008

45.75 x 60 inches© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Page 21: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 22: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

20

ROSEMAIRE FIOREVortex 2013smoke machineapprox. 18 x 9 inches© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Page 23: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 24: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

22

ROSEMAIRE FIORESmoke Painting: Process Documentation 2012video still10:12:16 looped© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Page 25: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 26: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 27: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

25

EMILY NOELLE LAMBERT

Emily Noelle Lambert’s works are the result of the artist’s engagement in a kind of creative !eldwork. She sources many of her materials—wood, bricks, stones, and buoys—from construction sites or places of personal signi!cance, and then intuitively transforms them into objects with new meaning. #is procedure has been self-imposed, as in the artist’s debut exhibition at the gallery Lu Magnus in New York for which she constructed everything on site from scratch, and also unintentional, as when a shipment for the artist’s installation at the Untitled Art Fair in Miami failed to arrive, leaving Lambert 48 hours to improvise supplies for a sculpture. Whatever the creative impulse, Lambert’s hybrid works are produced through a rigorous additive process: materials are stacked into teetering totems, sculptures become extensions of paintings, and imagery is built up in layers. Some of her paintings betray an allegiance to Philip Guston (particularly the rotund form and color of Rose Mountain), and others contain icons of $ags or mounds that hark back to the work of Kandinsky. #ough Lambert’s work can be linked to these historic traditions, the artist insists that her objects are also “of the body” either in terms of their scale or the performative gestures that produce them.9

Page 28: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

26

EMILY NOELLE LAMBERTFortress 2012

dimensions variable

Page 29: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 30: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

28

EMILY NOELLE LAMBERTThe Clearing 2011

94 x 90 inches

Page 31: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 32: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

30

EMILY NOELLE LAMBERTTongue Between Teeth 2012mixed media109 x 46 x 16 inchesYoke 2012acrylic on canvas116.5 x 111.5 inches

Page 33: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 34: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

32

EMILY NOELLE LAMBERTBreak In 2011

32 x 22 inches

Page 35: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 36: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

34

EMILY NOELLE LAMBERTClimbing 2011acrylic and collage on paper46 x 38 inches

Page 37: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 38: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 39: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

37

ALEJANDRO GUZMAN

Alejandro Guzman’s exuberant, jangling sculptures are also costumes, in a sense, for performances that draw on shamanistic ritual, storytelling, and street theater. Covered in diverse materials from trash bags to shards of broken mirrors and plastic $owers, these life-size sculptures are built on top of wheeled platforms typically used for transporting heavy objects. #e sculptures, which can be inhabited and “activated” by a performer within, are in this sense reminiscent of Nick Cave’s Sound Suits, but also recall Afro-Caribbean art of the barrio in their $amboyance and deliberate use of crude materials.10 Unlike the aforementioned Sound Suits, however, which are always shown as static “suits” in an exhibition context, Guzman’s works o"en come to life in unannounced street performances and organized gallery events. His sculptures have been sunk into lakes; frozen in blocks of ice; whirled into a dizzying frenzy; incinerated; and paraded through the streets of New York. #ough a live performance was not arranged for this exhibition, a video of one such event is included to convey the dynamic movement, scale, and versatility of Guzman’s objects.

Page 40: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

38

ALEJANDRO GUZMANEl Guaraguao in the Barrio 2011mixed mediadimensions variable© Courtesy of the artist

Page 41: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 42: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

40

ALEJANDRO GUZMANIntellectual Derelict: The Meltdown 2012mixed media44 x 26 x 82 inches© Courtesy of the artist

Page 43: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 44: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

42

ALEJANDRO GUZMANCreative Misunderstandings (Performance Sculpture Series) 2013

9 x 9 inches each (36 x 36 inches total)© Courtesy of the artist

Page 45: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 46: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 47: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

45

ERIN DUNN

#e artistic practice of Erin Dunn extends from hand-held puppets to animation; from embroidered tapestries to airbrushed stencils; from heavily impastoed paintings to miniature set pieces. Indeed, the artist is comfortable in a wide-range of media, which she o"en combines to great e&ect in installations and elaborate sets for video pieces. #is adaptability extends to the objects she produces, which $uidly transform and !nd new expression: a painting becomes a theatrical backdrop; a sculpture becomes a movable puppet. Dunn’s work is full of surprising juxtapositions. #e drooping, semi-viscous surface of one oil painting is interrupted by light wisps of an airbrush; in her video work Red Monkey, ignoble materials such as pipe cleaners, foam, and foil streamers are vivi!ed through the precise, skilled editing of stop-motion animation. #ese dualities have been analyzed in terms of gender; in one review of Dunn’s work, the artist’s “feminine” diligence and manual dexterity was contrasted with the implicitly masculine qualities of expressiveness and ambition.11 Dunn’s work is nonetheless enlivened by these binaries and the knowledge that her hands have touched every aspect of production—from the molding of hand puppets to the composition of video soundtracks.

Page 48: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

46

ERIN DUNNUntitled 2012oil and encaustic on canvas60 x 74 inches© Courtesy of the artist

Page 49: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 50: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

48

ERIN DUNNPoseys 2010oil on canvas16 x 19 inches© Courtesy of the artist

Page 51: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 52: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

50

ERIN DUNNRed Monkey 2010doll, video, and installation of materialsdimensions variable© Courtesy of the artist

Page 53: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 54: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

52

ERIN DUNNGreen Landscape 2010oil and acrylic on canvas30 x 41 inches© Courtesy of the artist

Page 55: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 56: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 57: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

55

SAYA WOOLFALK

Roberta Smith, co-chief art critic of !e New York Times, once described the indescribable work of Saya Woolfalk as “a little tour de force of performance, animation, born-again Pattern and Decoration, so" sculpture and anthropological satire.”12 Indeed, Woolfalk’s work is playful and childlike in some respects, but also impossibly complex. Much of her artistic oeuvre consists of “products” created in imaginary countries (such as No Place) by mythological beings (such as the Empathics). #e whimsical output of these cultures—which ranges from festooned costumes to plush, knitted toys—are meticulously cra"ed by Woolfalk using a variety of media, from video to drawing, painting, and sculpture, and exhibited in a form that resembles anthropological display. Yet the humble materials from which much of the work is constructed contradict the elaborate, Tolkeinesque milieu in which they are situated. Grounded in folklore and ethnographic studies, Woolfalk has bestowed the Empathics and the inhabitants of No Place with a history, a language, and a cultural past. Ultimately, the work she makes not only says something—about transcultural identity, colonial power, cultural politics, etc.—but also does something. It performs its own history.

Page 58: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

56

SAYA WOOLFALKNo Place: (pre)Constructed:Self (adolescent – blue)Self (adolescent – pink)Self (female)Self (landscape), 2008Ancestor 1Ancestor 2, 2005cotton fabric, silk fabric, spandex, Poly-Fil, doll head,fake hair, latex paint, acetate, cotton and synthetic

body suit and metal stand and base, plastic and ceramicbeads, plastic sequins, plastic egg cartons, plastic food

dimensions variable© Courtesy of the artist

Page 59: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 60: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

58

SAYA WOOLFALKNo Place: (pre)Constructed:Self (adolescent – blue)Self (adolescent – pink)Self (female)Self (landscape), 2008Ancestor 1Ancestor 2, 2005cotton fabric, silk fabric, spandex, Poly-Fil, doll head,fake hair, latex paint, acetate, cotton and synthetic

body suit and metal stand and base, plastic and ceramicbeads, plastic sequins, plastic egg cartons, plastic food

dimensions variable© Courtesy of the artist

Page 61: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 62: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

60

SAYA WOOLFALKNo Place: (pre)Constructed:Self (adolescent – blue)Self (adolescent – pink)Self (female)Self (landscape), 2008Ancestor 1Ancestor 2, 2005cotton fabric, silk fabric, spandex, Poly-Fil, doll head,fake hair, latex paint, acetate, cotton and synthetic

body suit and metal stand and base, plastic and ceramicbeads, plastic sequins, plastic egg cartons, plastic food

dimensions variable© Courtesy of the artist

Page 63: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 64: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

62

SAYA WOOLFALKNo Place: (pre)Constructed:Self (adolescent – blue)Self (adolescent – pink)Self (female)Self (landscape), 2008Ancestor 1Ancestor 2, 2005cotton fabric, silk fabric, spandex, Poly-Fil, doll head,fake hair, latex paint, acetate, cotton and synthetic

body suit and metal stand and base, plastic and ceramicbeads, plastic sequins, plastic egg cartons, plastic food

dimensions variable© Courtesy of the artist

Page 65: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 66: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

ENDNOTES

1. Mikel Dufrenne, !e Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (1953), trans. Edward S. Casey et al. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 30.

2. Pollock wrote about his process in a statement of 1950: “Technic is the result of need – new needs demand new technics – total control – denial of the accident – States of order – organic intensity – energy and motion made visible – memories arrested in space, human needs and motive – acceptance – Jackson Pollock.” See “Comet: Jackson Pollock’s Life and Work,” in Jackson Pollock, ed. Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1998), 15-85.

3. Harold Rosenberg, “#e American Action Painters,” Art News 51, no. 8 (December 1952): 22.

4. #e in$uence apparently went both ways: an English-language copy of the Gutai manifesto was found in Pollock’s library a"er his death. See Charles Darwent, “Obituary: Kazuo Shiraga: Avant-garde artist who painted barefoot and hanging from a rope,“ !e Independent, April 25, 2008, accessed November 1, 2013.

5. Maria Lind, ed., Performing the Curatorial With and Beyond Art (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012).

6. J. L. Austin, How to Do !ings With Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 12.

7. “If we see a woven basket, we imagine its weaving. If we see a thrown pot, we imagine its throwing.” Bill Arning, “Foreword,” in Hand + Made: !e Performative Impulse in Art and Cra", by Valerie Cassel Oliver (Houston: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2010), 6.

8. Stephen Maine, “Rosemarie Fiore: Pyrotechnics at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art,” artcritical.com, May 8, 2009, http://www.artcritical.com/2009/05/08/rosemarie-!ore-pyrotechnics-at-priska-c-juschka-!ne-art/#sthash.IJdhePKU.dpuf, accessed September 17, 2013. For more information, see Marshall N. Price, “Incendiary Endeavors,” catalogue essay, Arti#ciere (New York: Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, 2011).

9. Kendra Patrick, “A Studio Visit with Emily Noelle Lambert,” Muse Magazine, June 3, 2013, http://www.musemagazine.it/it/blog/art/a-studio-visit-with-emily-noelle-lambert.html, accessed September 4, 2013.

10. Holland Cotter, “A Constellation of Identities, Winking and Shi"ing: Museo del Barrio’s ‘Bienal 2013’ Explores Self and Origins,” New York Times, June 13, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/arts/design/museo-del-barrios-bienal-2013-explores-self-and-origins.html?pagewanted=all.

11. Residency Unlimited, “2012 Residencies,” residencyunlimited.org, accessed October 29, 2013.

12. Roberta Smith, “A Hot Conceptualist Finds the Secret of Skin,” !e New York Times, September 9, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/arts/design/05stud.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, accessed November 1, 2013.

64

Page 67: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the
Page 68: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

ROSEMAIRE FIORE

Smoke Painting #38 2013

50 x 60 inches© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Firework Drawing #61 2011

82 x 69.75 inches© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Firework Drawing #68 2011

61 x 82.5 inches© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Firework Drawing #23 2008

45.75 x 60 inches© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Vortex 2013smoke machineapprox. 18 x 9 inches© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Smoke Painting: Process Documentation 2012video10:12:16 looped© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

EMILY NOELLE LAMBERT

Fortress 2012

dimensions variable

The Clearing 2011

94 x 90 inches

Page 69: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

67

Yoke 2012acrylic on canvas116.5 x 111.5 inches

Tongue Between Teeth 2012mixed media109 x 46 x 16 inches

Break In 2011

32 x 22 inches

Climbing 2011acrylic and collage on paper46 x 38 inches

ALEJANDRO GUZMAN

El Guaraguao in the Barrio 2011mixed mediadimensions variable© Courtesy of the artist

Intellectual Derelict: The Meltdown 2012mixed media44 x 26 x 82 inches© Courtesy of the artist

Creative Misunderstandings (Performance Sculpture Series) 2013

9 x 9 inches each (36 x 36 inches total)© Courtesy of the artist

Creative Misunderstandings 2013video © Courtesy of the artist

ERIN DUNN

Untitled 2012oil and encaustic on canvas60 x 74 inches© Courtesy of the artist

Poseys 2010oil on canvas16 x 19 inches© Courtesy of the artist

Red Monkey 2010doll, video, and installation of materialsdimensions variable© Courtesy of the artist

Green Landscape 2010oil and acrylic on canvas30 x 41 inches© Courtesy of the artist

SAYA WOOLFALK

No Place: (pre)Constructed:Self (adolescent – blue)Self (adolescent – pink)Self (female)Self (landscape), 2008Ancestor 1Ancestor 2, 2005cotton fabric, silk fabric, spandex, Poly-Fil, doll head,fake hair, latex paint, acetate, cotton and synthetic

body suit and metal stand and base, plastic and ceramicbeads, plastic sequins, plastic egg cartons, plastic food

dimensions variable© Courtesy of the artist

Page 70: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

68

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

#e New York Professional Outreach Program (NYPOP) has succeeded because of the long-term commitment

of many people. Foremost among those are the more than 1,600 UMass Amherst art students who have studied

in the program over the past twenty-plus years. Alongside the students stand the more than 300 New York art

professionals who have presented lectures in their work places around the city.

Like many educational programs, NYPOP has struggled with di%cult economic circumstances over the past ten

years. We have been able to survive, and continue to, only because of the generous !nancial and philosophical

support of the Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, Julie Hayes. William Oedel, the Chair of the

Department of Art, Architecture, and Art History, has also been exceptional in his support and recognition of

NYPOP’s contribution the Department.

Lauren Rosati, is a curator at the National Academy Museum in Manhattan. She organized MAKE/DO as the

inaugural presentation of NYPOP’s Exhibition Program. Working with the artists she selected for MAKE/DO,

Ms. Rosati has presented an exciting and insightful examination of !ve new artists currently emerging in the New

York scene.

Don Desmett, Director of Exhibitions for #e James W. and Lois I. Richmond Center for Visual Arts at Gwen

Frostic School of Art at Western Michigan University, is hosting MAKE/DO at the RCVA. During the past three

years, Mr. Desmett has incorporated the NYPOP concept into the curriculum at Western Michigan University

with great success. He has been an invaluable partner and colleague in several aspects of NYPOP.

Amanda Tiller is the Assistant Director of NYPOP, and the Director of the Exhibition Program. Ms. Tiller is

highly valued, an essential contributor to the program. Her thoughtful dedication to NYPOP has been a key

factor in the program’s success.

JERRY KEARNSNYPOP DirectorCollege of Humanities and Fine ArtsUniversity of Massachusetts - Amherst

Page 71: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

LAUREN ROSATICurator

It takes many people to realize an exhibition, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to acknowledge them

here. Sincere thanks are due to Jerry Kearns, Director of the New York Professional Outreach Program (NYPOP)

at UMass Amherst, and Don Desmett, Founding Director of Exhibitions for the Richmond Center for Visual

Arts at Western Michigan University, who generously gave me the opportunity to organize the !rst exhibition

in the NYPOP Emerging Curators series. #eir guidance and support has been invaluable. Amanda Tiller,

Assistant Director of NYPOP at UMass Amherst, designed program brochures and the exhibition catalogue and

provided critical administrative support. Mindi K. Bagnall, Exhibitions Registrar at Western Michigan University,

coordinated the exhibition loans and safely organized the packing and shipping of the artworks from New York to

Kalamazoo.

I appreciate the assistance and support of Amy Sande-Friedman, Director, and Aaron Simonton, Registrar, of

Von Lintel Gallery and also Amelia Abdullahsani, Co-Founder; Janie Hanson, Partner; Lauren Scott Miller, Co-

Founder & Director; and Mary Rynasko, Gallery Manager of Lu Magnus, New York.

I bene!ted greatly from conversations with friends and colleagues who o&ered advice and suggestions that helped

me to shape this exhibition. #ey include Chad Alligood, Assistant Curator for Special Projects, Crystal Bridges

Museum of American Art; Seth Cohen, artist; Meredith Mowder, Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney

Museum of American Art and Graduate Teaching Fellow at Hunter College; Natalie Musteata, PhD Candidate

in Art History, CUNY Graduate Center; Marshall Price, Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, National

Academy Museum; Jacolby Satterwhite, artist; Hallie Scott, Education Program Director, Wassaic Project; Herb

Tam, Curator and Director of Exhibitions, Museum of Chinese in America; Damian Volpe; and Rachel Wetzler,

PhD Student, CUNY Graduate Center.

#e artists included in Make/Do—Erin Dunn, Rosemarie Fiore, Alejandro Guzman, Emily Noelle Lambert, and

Saya Woolfalk—opened up their studios and sometimes their homes to show me their work and discuss their

practices. Conversations with them helped to shape this exhibition, and I am thankful for their time, energy, and

e&orts in making it possible. #ey are in!nitely creative and deeply engaged artists, whose work represents a small

segment of the art currently being made in New York City; I am grateful for the opportunity to present their work

to you.

69

Page 72: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

Jerry Kearns founded the New York Professional Outreach Program (NYPOP) at the University of Massachusetts

Amherst, in 1990. For over twenty years, NYPOP has been making connections that lead to careers in the visual

arts. In that time, more than 1,200 UMass students have traveled nearly 100,000 miles to study the profession in

New York.

#e NYPOP Partner Program, founded in 2010, brings university students from across the nation to the work

places of contemporary professionals in New York City. #e experience encourages students to believe in the

possibility of a career in the arts. On-site sessions examine contemporary aesthetics in concert with an inside

perspective on the current professional scene. We o&er answers to the many practical questions that stem from a

student’s desire to become an artist, curator, art writer, and museum or gallery worker.

#e NYPOP Exhibition Program, founded in 2013, brings the excitement of New York contemporary art back

to college campuses. Furthering our overarching goal of providing students with insights into what they could

anticipate were they to move to a major art center over the next few years, the exhibition series features emerging

curators and artists. By introducing students to young curators and artists already at work in the city, we stress

networking with peers as a crucial element of building a career. #e NYPOP exhibitions will bring the New York

scene full circle by hosting curators and artists at the Frostic School of Art and the UMass Amherst campus,

among other institutions, for exhibitions, lectures, workshops and studio visits. By combining visits to the New

York experience, with campus exhibitions from the current scene, participating universities will bring career

dreams to reality for their students.

For more information about NYPOP, please visit www.umass.edu/nypop

Page 73: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

MAKE/DO is published to accompany the exhibition Make/Do: Contemporary Artists Perform Cra" (January

9 - February 14, 2014, organized by the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s New York Professional Outreach

Program and Western Michigan University’s James W. & Lois I. Richmond Center for Visual Arts, Gwen Frostic

School of Art, Kalamazoo, Michigan.

©Copyright UMASS/NYPOP 2014.

All text in this publication has been used by permission of the authors. All rights reserved

(front cover)ROSEMAIRE FIORESmoke Painting: Process Documentation 2012video still10:12:16 looped© Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Page 74: MAKE DO - Icompendiummedia.icompendium.com/rosemari_Make-Do-Catalog-email-.pdf · MAKE/DO includes the work of !ve contemporary artists based in New York City who engage with the

The New York Professional Outreach ProgramCollege of Humanities and Fine Arts

University of Massachusetts Amherst