MAKING SPACE Brattleboro Museum and Art Center
MAKING SPACE
Brattleboro Museum and Art Center
Beverly Acha, Emily Noelle Lambert, Mika Obayashi, Howardena Pindell,
Michelle Samour, Deborra Stewart-Pettengill, Lauren Watrous
The word “space” contains multitudes. It can imply our physical surroundings, the place in our minds where imagination lives, or an idea of distance or time. It can mean a quiet moment of rest or the vast, seemingly empty space between galaxies. How do we, as humans, exist in space? How does space exist in us? The seven artists included in Making Space use different means to explore this concept in a variety of contexts.
Deborra Stewart-Pettengill’s wire mesh sculptures and paintings on paper investigate the intricacy of botanical form and texture and the delicacy of biomorphic structure. The open weave of the hanging sculptures and the repetition of form conjure a breath-like rhythm, allowing the viewer to enter a meditative space. Other seemingly chaotic constructions use strategic thickets of dense material to draw the eye deeper and deeper. While sculpting these forms, Stewart-Pettengill used the shapes to develop paintings. The resulting pieces are meditations that explore transition, mutual dependance, multiplicity, and coalescence. Both the sculptures and the works on paper require slowness and a willingness to be led into a space of contemplation.
In a world that has become more frenetic and destabilizing by the day, the artists of Making Space encourage us to take a moment to reflect on how we move through the world around us—how the space we occupy is part of us and what it means to be open to sensation and imagination.
— Sarah Freeman, curator