The Brattleboro Museum and Art Center (BMAC) invites the public to join artists Fawn Krieger and David B. Smith on Zoom Thursday, Feb. 1, at 7 p.m. for a discussion of their work, which is on view at the museum in the exhibit "Home Bodies" through March 9.
Krieger, a ceramic artist, and Smith, a textile artist, share a creative approach: They layer and collapse physical materials and shapes to expand the possibilities of their respective media.
According to Sarah Freeman, BMAC's director of exhibitions, "the work in 'Home Bodies' draws us in with its playful use of materials. Both artists create visual languages that are experimental and improvised yet also soothing as a result of their repetitive and meditative nature."
Krieger's ceramic forms are pressed into concrete that she says "appears to ooze like mud squishing up between bare toes." Her work often takes on characteristics of an archaeological site, where layers of earth are scraped away to reveal shapes that resemble vessels, domestic artifacts, furniture, even a decadent TV dinner.
Organizers describe Smith's fiber works as possessing a "comforting softness, even as their bright colors and energetic patterns and textures keep the eye moving restlessly." Smith incorporates printed and woven imagery that lends his work a narrative quality, "filling the viewer with curiosity about the stories he is telling."
The two artists conceived "Home Bodies" during the pandemic when the concept of "home" took on numerous, often contradictory, meanings. Homes became places of isolation, refuge, entrapment, and reinvention. Krieger and Smith consider the idea of home as a place of care and freedom, a place to dream and create. To them, home can be a person's body and imagination as well as the surrounding physical environment.
In the Zoom discussion, the artists will discuss why they are drawn to the idea of accumulation in their work, why they develop and layer pattern and form. Their work is purposely crowded, filled with life and its chaos and clamor. Yet both artists also drill down to the human need to sometimes be quiet and still, to pare back. Krieger and Smith find home outside and inside themselves, and their work explores that contradiction.
Krieger's work has been exhibited at The Kitchen, Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum, and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, and Artforum. She is a 2019 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award Fellow. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design and her master's from Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.
Smith's work has appeared in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1 and International Center of Photography, and in solo shows at venues such as SUNY Cortland and Halsey McKay Gallery. He was awarded an NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Craft/Sculpture and has held numerous artist residencies.
Admission to the event is free and will be moderated by curator Wendy Vogel. To register to watch on Zoom, visit brattleboromuseum.org. A recording will be made available after the event.
This The Arts item was submitted to The Commons.