In the thick heat of an afternoon, Suzanne Volmer emerges from her expansive and well loved studio to greet me. As we enter the space, the all-white room unfolds with high ceilings and windows cascading light. Her work floods every corner: wide steel sculptures, paintings, models of outdoor installations, and her vessels—soft bending porcelain structures—all illuminated in afternoon sun.

Like her work, Volmer exudes an infectious intensity as she floats between bodies of various work. It is hard to not be enamored by every item; even small scraps of paper from various project models beam with creativity. In the furthest corner, her vessels sit quietly but demand attention. “These vessels are fired in an electric kiln,” she says. “Most people do not want their work to move once it goes to fire. But I specifically formulate the chemicals in the porcelain strips to shift. I want them to look like they are breathing.” She notes that while porcelain may appear fragile, her vessels also demonstrate immense strength in form and movement.

Clouds, captured full installation view, approximately 16’w X 14’H X 34’D

Volmer is vested in the scientific processes of working with steel and porcelain, manipulating chemical formulations to disrupt the ways in which porcelain and metal fuse and come undone. “What is fascinating to me is that porcelain and steel ignite at the same temperature,” she says. “Porcelain becomes glassy whereas the layers of steel that have been layered together begin to spring apart.” Her pieces, Metal Wedges and Tepees, for instance, are steel sculptures that have been heated to spring apart the layers, exposing charged edges and flakes of metal that she likes to “paint with.” Their texture is reminiscent of charred bark, seemingly fragile and haunted by fire.

Teepees, steel, 6’W X 3’H X 1’D

Volmer leans into the “essential qualities of her materials” and creates based on the movement of a location. Using the natural lines of a hill or the wide support beams of a gallery space, Volmer creates a symbiotic relationship between material and environment, “reusing anything intrinsic to the space.” “I want to create experiential work that does not have a directly obvious narrative,” says Volmer. “It is important for me for my work to exist naturally within a space, but to also command its attention while letting the person viewing it to map their own experiences and feelings.”

Since graduating from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn “too long ago,” she laughs, Volmer has been deeply immersed in the world of fine arts. From teaching at Rhode Island School of Design to being a guest artist at Massachusetts College of Art, she continues to mentor other artists and writes art criticism for various publications. She enjoys collaborative projects as well, including with seemingly non-art related collaborators such as engineers, metal fabricating companies, and various other specialty fields. “I love working with these people within my community who would not otherwise be involved in fine art,” she says. “They get a tremendous charge from being able to put their skills to use on something creative.”

“I like working with porcelain and various metals because the processes are not fragile. They are incredibly labor intensive and forceful and yet the outcome can be very soft,” Volmer says. “As a female artist I have been drawn to this because it commands a type of skill that enables me to be both technical and creative.”

Suzanne Volmer–artist
Lincoln, Rhode Island
Website

Top image Floating World, maquette for large installation, mixed media with porcelain. All images courtesy of Suzanne Volmer

The post Volmer’s Vessels appeared first on Take Magazine.

When Mass MoCA asked watercolorist Barbara Ernst Prey to capture on canvas the pre-renovation state of its new wing, Building 6, for the space’s opening, Prey thought such a big event deserved a painting of equal magnitude. The result is her largest work to date, 8 feet by 15 feet, taking a year and a half to complete.

It’s certainly huge, but the work is just as much about her relationship with Mass MoCA. In her student days at Williams College, where she is currently an adjunct professor, her teacher and mentor, S. Lane Faison, took her on a tour of the space that would become the museum, which Prey now sees as bringing her full circle.

“I really wanted to stretch the watercolor medium, take it in a whole new direction because no one’s done this,” Prey says, “but I was really interested in the space because I had a personal connection, and I think that comes out in the painting. It’s not just coming and doing a commission. It’s something where I lived there, I spent a lot of time in the building looking at the space, thinking about the space. I was there in my down jacket when it was dusty and dirty, and I would come out with dust all over me.”

Pencil study for final work, 5″ X 10″, Barbara Ernst Prey

Prey grew up in an art studio. Her mother was head of the Pratt Institute design department and Prey started painting as a small child alongside her mother. She’s since had work commissioned by NASA and for the 2003 White House Christmas card, but the Building 6 painting truly kept her on her feet, both figuratively and literally.

“You’re up and down,” she says. “I always like to step back and see. That’s my process—go back and see how it integrates with the whole. I’m painting something that is a defined space, but my painting is really abstract going into the structure so I’m always comparing different parts of the painting and going back and going up and down. Very aerobic.”

This came after a significant time just planning the work, which the scope of the work demanded. Merely tracking down a source for oversized watercolor paper took time and Prey had to figure out positioning such a large piece at an angle to prevent drips, while at the same time working from a ladder and scaffolding.

Prey started the process with nearly 50 on-site color studies. She continued work in her New York studio but moved everything to her Williamstown studio to be physically closer to the space. The final work also features experimentation of material not often found in watercolors—dust, dirt, and paint chips from the space embedded in the painting.

Though the work was daunting in the beginning Prey is pleased with the outcome, so much so that she’s not inclined to think small if she doesn’t have to. “It was actually pretty scary,” she says. “When you’re looking at this huge white piece of paper and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, how in the world am I going to pull this off, how is this going to work?’ Then you just dive in and work and work. I want to continue large. I feel like I can do this, whereas in the beginning I thought, ‘How do I do this?’”

Barbara Ernst Prey–artist
Williamstown, Massachusetts
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Top image, Building 6 renovation, watercolor, 8’ X 15’, Barbara Ernst Prey. Photos by Jack Criddle

The post This Watercolorist Thinks Big appeared first on Take Magazine.

From the soft hues of LED lights to the carefully placed assemblages of everyday objects, Shelby Head tells stories through sculpture. Her latest exhibition, Beyond Indifference, shown recently at Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery in Stamford, Connecticut, “is a collection of mixed media works assembled from decorative and domestic objects commonly associated with the ‘feminine’.” Born out of post-election anxiety, Head uses feminine materials to tackle notions of misogyny and the roles of gender, by using the iconography of a Power Figure as inspiration to evoke healing, protection, and even punishment against the psychic and social harm of a patriarchal society.

Born in Bronxville, New York in the late ’50s, Head has dedicated her life to sculpture, a field that she says did not always make a lot of space for women. “As a young woman, I was told in school that I couldn’t take shop class, that I had to take Home Ec,” she says. “And it was an incredible disservice to me. I do not cook, and honestly, I don’t have much interest in domestic things.” She went on to receive her M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and her M.A. in sculpture at Adams State University in Colorado. “When I went to college, I noticed that my lack of ability to study technical skills in grade school meant that I was greatly behind my male classmates in school.” she says.

Shelby Head installing Homage to WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union)

Post college, Head was hungry to learn intensive technical skills and began to work in art foundries in the desert landscape of Santa Fe, becoming a mold maker and wax technician. Later, she began working with sculptor Tom Otterness in New York City, building models for stop motion animation. “I am deeply moved by how materials work, what they feel like, how they can come together,” she says. “I worked as a technician so that I could not only make things that are aesthetically beautiful, but were also functionally sound and well made.” Even today, as she works through a process of trial and error to create new works, Head pulls out her hot glue gun and starts “putting things together to see what makes sense.”

Head’s work carries depth and secrets. A previous body of work, In Measured Line (2015), is a culmination of her precision as an artist, uniting the totality of her skill to create numerous beautifully constructed light boxes that layer wood, paper, and LED lights. The work focuses on exploring the new frontier of her aging body. “I know how to be young, and now I am growing old,” she says. “I don’t know how to be old yet, and to me it is fascinating. I am learning how I work.”

Exhibition View, Dialogue, Box 1: 9’x 8”, Box 2: 6’x 12”, Box 3: 4’x 10”, Box 4: 5’x 22”, Box 5: 7’x 9’, wood, paper, LED lights, 2015, Atonement, 6’x 6’ x 5.5”, wood, paper, copper flashing, LED lights, 2015

Throughout her individual sculptures in In Measured Line, Head covers mistakes and imperfections within the work by layering paper and light. The Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery notes that in the show “[s]he explores the ways in which we account for-either embrace or destroy-our imperfections and mimics how we navigate our complexities selectively revealing our inner workings to others”.

Like all of her work, In Measured Line demonstrates her meticulous and minimalist approach to sculpture that pulses with vulnerability and poignant narrative. She notes that she likes a minimalist approach because it ensures “that all elements of my sculptures have to be true. They can’t be hidden behind a lot of movement”. Unexpected objects such as garden hoses, hair, herbs, stockings, human nails, and an impressive collection of LED lights form the heart of her work. Such objects and materials speak in unexpected equations and powerful ideological nuances that unfold a world of human experience.

Shelby Head–artist
Madison, Connecticut
Website

Top image: Power Figure, 42″x 76″x 50″, iron, cord, plug, ironing board, mannequin, paper, cheese cloth, safety pin, knitting needles, reflective frame, tights, stockings, finger nails, hair, herbs, towel, 2017, photo by Jadu Durrans

The post Paper and Light appeared first on Take Magazine.

From the soft hues of LED lights to the carefully placed assemblages of everyday objects, Shelby Head tells stories through sculpture. Her latest exhibition, Beyond Indifference, shown recently at Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery in Stamford, Connecticut, “is a collection of mixed-media works assembled from decorative and domestic objects commonly associated with the ‘feminine’.” Born out of post-election anxiety, Head’s work makes use of feminine materials to tackle notions of misogyny and the roles of gender, by using the iconography of a Power Figure as inspiration to evoke healing, protection, and even punishment against the psychic and social harm of a patriarchal society.

Born in Bronxville, New York in the late ’50s, Head has dedicated her life to sculpture, a field that she says did not always make a lot of space for women. “As a young woman, I was told in school that I couldn’t take shop class, that I had to take Home Ec,” she says. “And it was an incredible disservice to me. I do not cook, and honestly, I don’t have much interest in domestic things.” She went on to receive her M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and her M.A. in sculpture at Adams State University in Colorado. “When I went to college, I noticed that my lack of ability to study technical skills in grade school meant that I was greatly behind my male classmates in school,” she says.

Shelby Head installing Homage to WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union)

Post college, Head was hungry to learn intensive technical skills. She began to work in art foundries in the desert landscape of Santa Fe, becoming a mold maker and wax technician. Later, she assisted sculptor Tom Otterness in New York City, building models for stop motion animation. “I am deeply moved by how materials work, what they feel like, how they can come together,” she says. “I worked as a technician so that I could not only make things that are aesthetically beautiful, but were functionally sound and well made.” Even today, as she works through a process of trial and error to create new works, Head pulls out her hot glue gun and starts “putting things together to see what makes sense.”

Head’s work carries depth and secrets. A previous body of work, In Measured Line (2015), is a culmination of her precision as an artist, uniting the totality of her skill to create numerous beautifully constructed light boxes that layer wood, paper, and LED lights. The work focuses on exploring the new frontier of her aging body. “I know how to be young, and now I am growing old,” she says. “I don’t know how to be old yet, and to me it is fascinating. I am learning how I work.”

Exhibition View, Dialogue, Box 1: 9’x 8”, Box 2: 6’x 12”, Box 3: 4’x 10”, Box 4: 5’x 22”, Box 5: 7’x 9’, wood, paper, LED lights, 2015, Atonement, 6’x 6’ x 5.5”, wood, paper, copper flashing, LED lights, 2015

Throughout her individual sculptures in In Measured Line, Head covers mistakes and imperfections within the work by layering paper and light. The Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery notes that in the show “[s]he explores the ways in which we account for–either embrace or destroy–our imperfections, and mimics how we navigate our complexities, selectively revealing our inner workings to others.”

Like all of her work, In Measured Line demonstrates her meticulous and minimalist approach to sculpture that pulses with vulnerability and poignant narrative. She notes that she likes a minimalist approach because it ensures “that all elements of my sculptures have to be true. They can’t be hidden behind a lot of movement.” Unexpected objects such as garden hoses, hair, herbs, stockings, human nails, and an impressive collection of LED lights form the heart of her work. Such objects and materials speak in unexpected equations and powerful ideological nuances that unfold a world of human experience.

Shelby Head–artist
Madison, Connecticut
Website

Top image: Power Figure, 42″x 76″x 50″, iron, cord, plug, ironing board, mannequin, paper, cheese cloth, safety pin, knitting needles, reflective frame, tights, stockings, finger nails, hair, herbs, towel, 2017, photo by Jadu Durrans

The post Paper and Light appeared first on Take Magazine.