My exhibit at ArtLab will be an opportunity to try out a site-responsive installation of my wire drawings. In the past I’ve exhibited these linear 3-d constructions as stand-alone pieces. But because they have very architectural associations, I think it will be interesting to see them as a kind of “floating city.” The constructions will be hung from the ceiling. My on-site work at ArtLab will consist of adding improvised “bridges,” “tunnels” and other linkages between them, so that they become a single work of art, unique to the situation of the exhibit.
Spider by Sarah Vaeth
A few words about my practice in general: Although I work in several modes and media, I seem to think in terms of motifs which relate otherwise diverse bodies of work to each other. A few favorites are webs, quilts, tents, bridges… I use these in images which are intentionally ambiguous, leaving room for psychological associations to come in.
For several years an idea of construction/dissolution has been the major principle of my work. My drawing process is driven by activities like placement, building, dismantling, rebuilding. Often I’m working from a basic unit of line or mark, thinking of the lines or marks functioning like bricks out of which the image is “built.” This synonymous relationship between drawing and building arrives at literal equivalence in my wire drawings. (I do think of these 3-d constructions as drawings, only the line is physically embodied in a length of wire.) I may spend as much time taking a construction apart, as I spend making it. Works like Mutable Box or Spider begin as symmetrical and firmly supported quasi-architectural forms- then I introduce flaws in the integrity of the structure, moments of slippage. I feel finished when I’ve hit this balance between precise placement and capricious disarray.
Mutable Box by Sarah Vaeth
This play between structure and the dissolution of structure is very compelling for me, suggesting analogies to human constructions subjected to time and entropy. I feel again and again that I’m expressing an acquiescence to the fragility and failing of things.
