Maryland Institute College of Art’s (MICA) Exhibition Development Seminar (EDS) students present HAND/MADE, an art show juxtaposing an original nineteenth-century marble sculpture by artist and former MICA student William Henry Rinehart with 3-D, performance, and video works by contemporary sculptors and interdisciplinary artists.
Exhibited in MICA’s Decker Gallery, HAND/MADE makes vital connections between traditional methods employed by artists working with nineteenth-century studio artisan teams and collaborative practices in contemporary studios. The show underscores how sculptures are seldom the result of a simple transaction between a single artist, an idea and a given medium.
HAND/MADE features six contemporary artists, all with ties to MICA, of which five were commissioned to create new work. Fiber faculty member Annet Couwenberg, Nancy Daly ’11 (Photographic & Electronic Media), Director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture Maren Hassinger, Richard Vosseller ’95 (general fine arts) and Megan Van Wagoner ’00 (Mount Royal School of Art) all created works that responded to Rinehart’s most reproduced sculpture, Sleeping Children. Each artist was asked to reflect on the relationship between individual creative expression and artistic collaboration—and what it means when others’ labor is required to realize an artwork.
MICA’s own Sleeping Children is installed alongside the commissioned pieces, allowing the audience to draw connections from the past to the present. Also on display are a contemporary marble work by Sebastian Martorana ’08 (Rinehart School of Sculpture), with his tools and maquettes (or scale models) to help viewers visualize the traditional carving process.
Couwenberg utilizes 3-D printing technology to create abstract sculptures that refer to Dutch ruffled collars and traditional embroidery to explore how fabric impacts our lives from the past to the present. Daly creates interactive sculptures that give physical existence to digital phenomena and asks viewers to consider how social media and online technologies transform the texture of their lives. Originally trained in dance, Hassinger often bridges the gaps between sculpture and performance in her work. Vosseller creates large-scale wooden sculptures that mimic the forms of collapsed buildings or falling prizefighters to examine movement within static structures. Van Wagoner creates sculptures out of cast glass and aluminum that investigate our relationship to factory farming and the natural world. Martorana uses traditional carving methods to transform unyielding marble into unexpected textures and forms, including cushions, bath towels and stuffed animals.
HAND/MADE at MICA serves as a counterpart to Rinehart’s Studio: Rough Stone to Living Marble, an exhibition at The Walters Art Museum curated by Jenny Carson, chair of MICA’s Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, with assistance from Jo Briggs, the Walters’ assistant curator of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and manager of curatorial fellowships. Carson worked closely with EDS instructor Jeffry Cudlin and as a mentor to the EDS class during the exhibition planning process.
Exhibited in MICA’s Decker Gallery, HAND/MADE makes vital connections between traditional methods employed by artists working with nineteenth-century studio artisan teams and collaborative practices in contemporary studios. The show underscores how sculptures are seldom the result of a simple transaction between a single artist, an idea and a given medium.
HAND/MADE features six contemporary artists, all with ties to MICA, of which five were commissioned to create new work. Fiber faculty member Annet Couwenberg, Nancy Daly ’11 (Photographic & Electronic Media), Director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture Maren Hassinger, Richard Vosseller ’95 (general fine arts) and Megan Van Wagoner ’00 (Mount Royal School of Art) all created works that responded to Rinehart’s most reproduced sculpture, Sleeping Children. Each artist was asked to reflect on the relationship between individual creative expression and artistic collaboration—and what it means when others’ labor is required to realize an artwork.
MICA’s own Sleeping Children is installed alongside the commissioned pieces, allowing the audience to draw connections from the past to the present. Also on display are a contemporary marble work by Sebastian Martorana ’08 (Rinehart School of Sculpture), with his tools and maquettes (or scale models) to help viewers visualize the traditional carving process.
Couwenberg utilizes 3-D printing technology to create abstract sculptures that refer to Dutch ruffled collars and traditional embroidery to explore how fabric impacts our lives from the past to the present. Daly creates interactive sculptures that give physical existence to digital phenomena and asks viewers to consider how social media and online technologies transform the texture of their lives. Originally trained in dance, Hassinger often bridges the gaps between sculpture and performance in her work. Vosseller creates large-scale wooden sculptures that mimic the forms of collapsed buildings or falling prizefighters to examine movement within static structures. Van Wagoner creates sculptures out of cast glass and aluminum that investigate our relationship to factory farming and the natural world. Martorana uses traditional carving methods to transform unyielding marble into unexpected textures and forms, including cushions, bath towels and stuffed animals.
HAND/MADE at MICA serves as a counterpart to Rinehart’s Studio: Rough Stone to Living Marble, an exhibition at The Walters Art Museum curated by Jenny Carson, chair of MICA’s Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, with assistance from Jo Briggs, the Walters’ assistant curator of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and manager of curatorial fellowships. Carson worked closely with EDS instructor Jeffry Cudlin and as a mentor to the EDS class during the exhibition planning process.
Hand/Made Catalog: MICA side by Jeffry Cudlin on Scribd