Category: 2020

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Strange Fruit

  • Selecting materials is a process
  • Sorting and building by color story
  • Detail view of bottle cap beads
  • The beading draws you in
  • The ribbons are dripping color
  • Strange Fruit
A new body of work inspired by Billy Holiday “Strange Fruit” and the racial protests of 2020.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

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Meet My New StudioAssistant

I have a new studio assistant! YAY!

Meet Jeese Durost

Jesse is currently cutting ribbon, making yarn from recycled materials and drilling tens of thousands of bottle caps and corks I’ve been hoarding or received as gifts from hoarder friends these last 9 years. You know who you are and I thank you. XOXO.

Jesse currently lives and works in Queens, New York and rides his bike and takes the PATH to Sky Garden Gallery a couple days a week to help me out.

For his own artwork, Jesse utilizes found and common materials, to build precarious, architectural sculptures, paintings, videos and digital works that attempt to exist in a state of perpetual flux. He is interested in exploring the peripheral aspects of the exterior world, how they inform and are informed by interior, subliminal states of being.

Jesse received his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in 1998. His work has been exhibited at The Soap Factory in Minneapolis, 33 Orchard in New York City, and 1430
Contemporary in Portland, Oregon.

To see some of Jesse’s personal works visit www.Jessedurost.com

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Quarantine Check In From Sky Garden Gallery

If I’ve learned anything during this time of uncertainty, things happen when they happen. And for a reason… If I just allow, there is less stress and anxiety in the not knowing of things.

… for real.

If you want to social distance watch a sunset with me from Sky Garden’s roof deck in Jersey City, please let me know. Open sky and air… and this view…

Ping me your avails.

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Kenya Art Residency Update: Turning Lemons into Lemonade

This month, I was supposed to be in Kenya learning beading and basketry techniques but my artists residency with Now Friends was postponed/canceled. Damn you Corona…  

For a little inspiration visit with my Pinterest scrapbook Kenya Residency 2020 board instead.

I have been experimenting all year with recycled materials in preparation for this residency.  I am ready so, switch up and plan B, turning lemons into lemonade mode…

I enrolled in a ZOOM alternative weaving and basketry intensive program at the Textile Arts Center (NYC) later this month. It isn’t Kenya, but I am moving forward advancing my skills using bottle caps, wine corks, plastic bags, ribbon gifted to me by so many of my favorite people. You know who you are.

Watch my Instagram Stories to see how these works progress.

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Sky Garden Gallery @ Virtual Access JC Fridays

On June 5, 2020, McCarty and I participated in @ Virtual Access JC Fridays to show fibre works from I Am My Hair while I demonstrated the Larks Head Knot .

Watch our segment.

Or to experience the self guided I Am My Hair Workshop slide show please visit this – link

JC Fridays is a seasonal arts festival in Jersey City, New Jersey presented by Art House Productions. 

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Material Identity In Colorado

In the exhibition Material Identity, artists and makers are invited to explore the substance of material, paying special attention to their place in the world, either from a focus inward, or how they identify in. The show asks how does materiality represent who we are? Does the material you use dictate who you are as a maker? How does medium speak to who you are as an individual?

EXHIBITION DATES: July 10 – Aug 29, 2020

LOCATION: Artworks Center for Contemporary Art in Loveland Colorado

I have three fiber works in the exhibition