ArtSake

Artists Candice Smith Corby and Leslie Schomp are wearing multiple hats (visually dazzling ones, no doubt). As they continue to create personally resonant mixed-media art, they’re also curators of Self/Fabricated, an intriguing exhibition of work by artists (including the curators, Jan Johnson, and others) who explore autobiography through cloth and stitching. The show opens at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury September ’12.

Recently, they’ve added a “fundraiser” hat to the stack. Through June 1, the artists are using USA Projects to raise funds for an exhibition catalog.

Here, they answer our cur8or eight questions with multi-talented aplomb.

Explain the idea behind Self/Fabricated.
Candice and Leslie: We have been close friends for awhile and around 4 yrs ago we were admiring each other’s work and how we would love to see it shown together sometime. We were imagining someone else curating us into their show – both of us wishing some magic curator would call us up. We were both using cloth and images of ourselves in our work, albeit quite differently, and we share similar loves of vintage fabric and old pastimes of stitching, ie. tea towels, table cloths, doilies, sampler’s etc. There was more to these tokens than just their practical use. Each one told a story not just in the stains and physical wear but of course also in how they were marked, painted on and embroidered. There was an empathy for someone who had spent hours of both toil and enjoyment in the creation of these items. As both of us were married and mothers, we were also at the same time balancing domestic work, employment and work as artists.

Once the lightbulb went off that we could organize our own show, the inclusion of the other artists, Jan Johnson, Ilona Anderson, Joetta Maue, Wylie Garcia Sopia, and David Curcio, happened pretty organically. Each artist wowed us with their return to stitching methods and reference of cloth as well as how they were attempting to identify, describe, or invent one’s one identity, life’s story or self through traditional and poetic self-portraiture. The word Fabricated is not just about cloth but also about how we create our own stories.

Being a curator is like being a a) circus ringleader, b) high-wire performer, or c) driver of the clown car.
Leslie: Being a curator feels to me like being a circus ringleader. What I love about our show is how varied the work is even though the artists identify so strongly with each other. Also the practical elements of being a curator; the various tasks and concerns are again so varied-from writing, business elements, laying out the space of the show, etc.

Candice: I would say all of the above! I’ve found that I have to be the one in charge of complete chaos but act like I am completely unfrazzled with steady poise and also being open to spontaneous wacky ideas and personality quirks.

What’s the most surprising response you’ve ever had to your work?
Candice: When I was an undergrad, I made a pretty dramatic – overly dramatic – sculptural work with film and text influence by a dream and family memories. I was shocked by the emotive response and also saw the power that art can sometimes have. I think it also made me realize I wanted more joy and humor in my work one day.

Leslie: This sounds kind of crazy but the most surprising response to my work was written in a guest book at a solo show I had. It said the work was “shockingly personal.” I suppose I was surprised because I always thought that the personal was obscured through lines, marks and veiled layering.

The unauthorized biography of your life is titled:
Leslie: I can’t imagine how others see my life, but here are a few attempts (some serious and some a joke): A Life in Grey: the Quiet Years; or I Don’t Know!: the Leslie Schomp Story; or The Girl with the Last Name That is Like a Sound Effect.

Candice: Most Improved, OR Easily Entertained.

Share a surprise twist in the Leslie Schomp/Candice Smith Corby story.
Leslie: My son marries Candice’s daughter one day, and we become Grandmother sisters! Or that our kids grow up and become artists and do really fun surprising work.

Candice: We switch hairstyles. We open a yoga/tae kwon do/knitting studio.

What is the most misunderstood aspect of being a curator?
Candice: Simultaneously being introverted and extroverted. That it involves being a high-end administrative assistant and an event planner.

What are you currently reading?
Leslie: I’m currently reading A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Girl, which is a collection of writings by Irish authors about their childhoods, edited by and based on interviews with John Quinn.

Candice: Six different home decor magazines and Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England.

Fill in the blanks: a stitch in ________ saves ________.
Candice and Leslie: We got stumped! “A stitch in yours saves mine?”

Self/Fabricated is funding on USA Projects through June 1, 2012.

Images: still images from USA Projects video: Self/Fabricated, work by David Curcio, and work by Joetta Maue; Leslie Schomp, SELF PORTRAIT WITH SON (2007), hair and nylon thread on found handkerchiefs, embroidery hoops.

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Artist Ellen Wetmore has curated a group exhibition of work by the Boston Sculptors, an artists’ cooperative founded in 1992. The University Gallery at UMass Lowell exhibition highlights the work of 30 members. The show includes works both installed in the gallery as well as outside.

1. Explain the idea behind the Boston Sculptors’ show that you’ve curated. How to fit 20 years of sculpture and 30 sculptors into 700 square feet and make it an educational experience about material and form.

2. Being a curator is like a) channeling Simon Cowell, b) being an organic gardener or c) flying a jet. Who’s Simon Cowell?

3. What’s the most surprising response you’ve ever had to your work?  “Too much cleavage”

4. The unauthorized biography of your life is titled:  She’s Just Too Damn Big.

5. Share a surprise twist in the Ellen Wetmore story:  I sometimes wish I was a surgeon. The money! The fame! The civic praise!

6. What is the most misunderstood aspect of being a curator?  That it is a creative endeavor.

7. What are you currently reading?  The History of the Breast by Marilyn Yalom

8. If Louise Bourgeois were to walk into the University Gallery at UMass Lowell, what would she say?  Art is a guarantee of sanity.

Boston Sculptors 20th Anniversary Exhibition, April 2 – 26, 2012
Artist Reception and Gallery Talk with Gillian Christy: April 4, 5 – 7 pm
A Conversation with Nancy Selvage: April 23, 3-4:30 Gallery Hours: Mon – Thurs 10 a.m. – 7:30 p.m.; Fri 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Outdoor Exhibition continues through June 30
University Gallery at UMass Lowell

Representative works from the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Artists Fellowship program awardees Laura Baring-Gould, Rosalyn Driscoll, Beth Galston, Mags Harries, Sarah Hutt, and Julia Shepley as well as works by B. Amore, Caroline Bagenal, Kim Bernard, Benjamin Cariens, Gillian Christy, Murray Dewart, Donna Dodson, Laura Evans, Sally S. Fine, Peter DeCamp Haines, Ken Hruby, David Lang, Michelle Lougee, Joyce McDaniels, Nancy Selvage, Jessica Straus, Marilu Swett, Dan Wills and Andy Zimmermann will be on display. Outdoor works include Andy Moerlein, Margaret Swan, Hannah Verlin, Joseph Wheelwright and Leslie Wilcox.

Image credit: Photographs of Flower of Lowell installation by Hannah Verlin. Each flower has the name and work site of each of 5700 women working at the Lowell mills in 1836.

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Beth Kantrowitz is the former co-director of Allston Skirt Gallery, one of the most exciting venues in Boston’s contemporary visual arts scene until its closure in 2008.

More recently, Beth and fellow curator Kathleen O’Hara run Drive-By, an innovative Watertown art space whose fascinating exhibitions include “Portraits,” recently explored on ArtSake.

Ahead of Beth’s current curatorial endeavor, the public art project Move Me, we asked her our “Cur8or” questions.

Your project with artist Roberta Paul is called Move Me. Explain?
MOVE ME is a “pop up” public art project that will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the spring of 2012. The Cambridge Arts Council 501(c)(3), bkprojects and artist Roberta Paul will collaborate on this endeavor.

Inspired by Paul’s travels to the Serengeti, this multifaceted event investigates themes of immigration, national identity, and life transitions through the metaphor of animal migration. It will include a four-week gallery exhibition at the Cambridge Arts Council, as well as a two-week continuous “performance” in the streets.

At its essence, this is a project imbued with a sense of wonderment, inquisitiveness and self-reflection; it is about boundaries and borders, real and perceived.

Being a curator is like a) flying a plane, b) being a gardener or c) waiting for the subway to come?
Being a gardener: cultivating relationships with artists, spaces and viewers.

What’s the most surprising response overheard at a show you curated?
How did you know that the work you chose would work so well together?!?

The unauthorized biography of your life is titled:
Why Not….

Share a surprise twist in the Beth Kantrowitz story.
I worked as a social worker for many years.

What is the most misunderstood aspect of being a curator?
That every curator is or was an artist. A curator works alongside the artist or the artist’s work to understand and present in the best and most thoughtful way.

What are you currently reading?
Death of a Salesman

If Duchamp walked into your gallery, what would he say?
Where’s the urinal?

The MOVE ME project will travel through the streets of Cambridge starting with MBTA trolleys on April 9, 2012. Also, work from MOVE ME will exhibit at the Cambridge Arts Council gallery April 2-June 15, 2012, with an artist reception Friday, April 27, 2012, 6-8 PM. Learn about the project’s successful Kickstarter campaign.

Images: images from the MOVE ME project by Roberta Paul, in collaboration with Beth Kantrowitz and the Cambridge Arts Council.

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Camilo Alvarez, Owner/Director/Curator/Preparator of Samsøn gallery in Boston’s South End is a very busy dude. As many can attest, he champions contemporary art and artists, not only through his gallery, but also at art fairs and international exhibitions. So we were fortunate to catch up with him, and ask him our curator 8 questions (in a series we’re calling, yup, “Cur8or”).

The current Mark Cooper show is entitled More Is More. Explain? It comes from an old Chinese proverb.

Being a curator is like a) flying a plane, b) being a gardener or c) waiting for the subway to come? I would say more like being a gardener. I am helping sometimes to sow, often to grow and eventually reap.

What’s the most surprising response you’ve overheard when someone is looking at work in your gallery? Is this all your work?

The unauthorized biography of your life is titled: strange company

Share a surprise twist in the Camilo Alvarez story. I’m curious?

What is the most misunderstood aspect of being a curator? That there is a set way to do things…

What are you currently reading? I read a lot at the same time so: A Life of Trouble by Marcia Tucker, Sex Before Dawn, In Defense of Lost Causes by Slavoj Zizek.

If Duchamp walked into your gallery, what would he say? Chess?

Samsøn
450 Harrison Avenue/29 Thayer Street, Boston, MA 02118
Mark Cooper: More is More
October 21 – December 10, 2011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday: 11AM – 6PM
Some Sundays: 12 – 5PM and by appointment

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