“Craft” is a fantastically nebulous term. We might associate it with actors, glassblowing, witches, or cuisine–and each would be apt. More commonly, it might evoke a variety of handmade items (ultimately, “craft” simply connotes the maker’s hand), including knitting, latch-hook rugs, needlepoint samplers, tatted lace, and patchwork quilts. These traditional handicrafts provide the inspiration–as well as the techniques and materials–for the work in the exhibition Fuzzy Logic.

The contemporary reclamation of traditional craft–driven by issues of sustainability, frugality, anti-consumerism, and a feminist reclamation of “women’s work”–is something of a cultural phenomenon. Arguably, it is a response to a world of ubiquitous technology. The current DIY (do-it-yourself) renaissance has its roots in everything from the Arts and Crafts movement and the Whole Earth Catalog to punk culture and Riot Grrl. Bolstered by the Internet, it has democratized media as disparate as publishing,

Fuzzy LogicEssay by Audrey Mast

Stacia Yeapanis, Inara Serra, 2009

cinema and, of course, handicrafts.

When handicraft is utilized in the realm of fine art, many of its cultural associations are subverted. But since knitting has become a hip hobby, simply utilizing materials like yarn, felt, or fake flowers isn’t particularly radical. Instead, we are faced with the term’s multiple meanings–in particular its connotation of utility–which contradicts the already tenuous delineations between “fine art,” “design,” and “craft.”

It is not my interest as a curator to make such delineations, but to provoke a discussion of how the intersections between each can affect our experience and understanding of a work.

The artists in Fuzzy Logic do not merely present craft with a twist, but explore its potential more fully. Because craft is democratic, it is familiar and accessible to the viewer. It is textural and tactile, inviting our participation, taunting us to touch it. The work in Fuzzy Logic exploits this, evoking our desires for comfort, connection, contentment, and indulgence–as well as the complacency, superficiality and fleeting joy that might accompany these feelings. While myriad new directions in fiber art have been explored in depth by such landmark exhibitions as Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting (Museum of Arts and Design, New York, 2007), Poetics of the Handmade (MoCA, Los Angeles, 2007), and the excellent book By Hand (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), encouraging us to consider the ways craft can look and function, the artists in this exhibition ask: “how does it feel?”

Our emotional response to this work is where my interest lies. How do the materials ask us to feel? While a traditional patchwork quilt may be both beautiful and functional, what it asks us to feel is straightforward: good. Warm. But the artists in Fuzzy Logic recognize that even good feelings may have a more complex reality beneath the surface.

Laura Splan, Prozac, Thorazine, Zoloft, 2000

Laura Splan’s Prozac, Thorazine, Zoloft (2000) is a trio of plump, huggable pill-shaped pillows. Made for an exhibit at the first Ladyfest in Olympia Washington, these are some of the first craft-based soft sculptures Splan ever made. (Continuing her interest in modern medicine’s mediations on the body, Splan has since created doilies that depict the pattern of a virus; gloves cast from her own hands made from the remains of a cosmetic surgical peel, and a scarf knit with clear vinyl tubing that intravenously drains the wearer’s blood).

It could be argued that Prozac, Thorazine, Zoloft arrived on the cusp of the contemporary DIY movement (Readymade magazine was founded in 2001, as well as Boston’s Bazaar Bizarre, one of the first indie craft fairs). Ten years later, Splan’s cheerful Pop sculpture still plays on our desire for comfort, but as mood-altering drugs have become increasingly common, we now read them as iconic objects–like modern-day Campbell’s soup cans–whose cultural significance reaches beyond their literal use.

Splan has noted that the process of latch-hooking itself is so repetitive as to be mind-numbing, like a drug. But the process of needlework, with its detailed, singular focus, can also be introspective. Stacia Yeapanis’ Everybody Hurts is a series of cross-stitched screen stills of her favorite television characters in pivotal moments of emotional duress. She says that “the act of cross-stitching is a slow reproduction of a single moment from a time-based medium by hand. It is an act of cruelty, contemplation and commemoration.” In her work, needlework is not used with irony, but with a sincere recognition of how the media informs her process and concepts. Formally, the tiny, precise stitches mimic the pixels in a digital image.

Yeapanis sees television as a repository for contemporary myths. Her TV-viewing tastes tend toward science-fiction or cult-classic shows with unforgettable characters, like Inara Serra of Joss Whedon’s space opera Firefly or Bill Haverchuck of the short-lived comedy/drama Freaks and Geeks. Part found photography, part portraiture, this work is deeply personal: Yeapanis identifies with and freezes the emotional state of her subjects, noting that “emotions mediated through stories are not ‘unreal’ emotions.” While Yeapanis’ subject matter is not real, her experience with it is visceral, and as viewers,

we sense its catharsis.

The ways in which we perceive reality are also present in Amanda Browder’s soft sculptures. While Yeapanis uses a meditative process, Browder utilizes brightly-colored, common materials–chiefly felt and recycled fabric–to address the psychedelic experience, recreating the “subtle change in perception” that arises at the intersection of the familiar and the strange. Rocks O’ Plenty (2009) and Bonfire (2001) are “similar to the images in a comic book…reduced, simplified, and reconfigured to be idealized and sensational,” says Browder. She uses the idioms of Pop to exaggerate and celebrate, but is, like many of the artists in Fuzzy Logic, uninterested in irony. Her idealized interpretations of nature (or human

intervention on it)–achieved by fashioning hard rocks with soft stuffing and making flaming logs with faux fur–are lyrical, not cynical.

Amanda Browder, Bonfire, 2001

There is more than a touch of irony in Rob Conger’s latch-hooked wall hangings, which he has been making since the mid-’90s, depicting TV-game-show sets, portraits of technological innovators, and, in a series called Disneyland Deaths, various sites of the relatively few times people have died accidentally on a ride or attraction at the “happiest place on Earth.” Big Thunder Mountain references the following incident, recounted on Snopes.com and reprinted by Conger in a statement accompanying the work:

“A 22-year-old man, Marcelo Torres of Gardena, California, died when a locomotive separated from its train along a tunnel section of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Torres bled to death after suffering blunt force trauma of the chest.”

Conger’s Big Thunder Mountain does not depict Torres’ death; on its surface it is an innocuous (though visually dynamic) picture-postcard view of revelers enjoying the ride.

Rob Conger, Big Thunder Mountain, 2005

But Conger’s wit is not insincere. Working from photographic source material, he develops a detailed pattern in Photoshop before embarking on the simple, though time-consuming, process of hooking the yarn through canvas mesh. His process and materials are a way for him to reconcile “barriers between finance and crafts, business and homemaking,” he says. In the book By Hand, Conger also observes that “I am fascinated and fulfilled by the idea that I can use craft to surprise people into seeing through their shields.” This is perhaps the strongest link between the works in Fuzzy Logic: that the tactile and familiar encourage us as viewers to let our defenses down long enough to discover a real connection to the art.

Carson Fox’s work makes use of some of the most disarming materials one might imagine: silk flowers, glitter, and artificial birds and butterflies. Fox packs this girly, gaudy ephemera into balls, wreaths, and other sculptural objects that reference Victoriana, funereal memorials, notions of decorative art and beauty, and what she identifies as the “lingering biases against ‘low’ materials and their associations with class and gender.” While much of Fox’s work in this vein has been in pastel, candy colors (carrying words like “fraud,” “slut,” and “liar”), this installation of wreaths bearing the word “NO” represents one of the first works she dyed black. Made in anticipation of her first major solo show in New York, Fox sees it as a way to memorialize the many rejections she faced as an emerging artist. “I am interested in beauty, but I mistrust it. Instead, I look for beauty that exists in tension with the materials or the circumstances that invent it,” she says.

Carson Fox, No, 2004

Sprawled over the grounds of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut like a monstrous afghan, Orly Genger’s massive installation Mr. Softy was hand-woven out of thousands of feet of multicolored nylon rope (the sort usually used by rock climbers). The short video on view in Fuzzy Logic documents a performance in which Genger, clad in kneepads and workout gear, struggles to hide beneath, crawl through, and rearrange her monumental creation. In this way, Mr. Softy is both an unstable landscape and a vehicle for exploration of relationships between the artist’s body and her work.

Gina Alvarez makes work with great respect for craft and a strong connection between materials, process and concept. Her installation recollect consists of various small soft sculptures and works on paper, placed under a series of hand-blown glass bell jars she had commissioned specifically for this exhibition. Under the jars, each piece is “suspended in time” and “deprived of oxygen,” as she describes, “elevating the moment of existence.” We are able to approach them from a 360-degree point of view, and appreciate each work individually as a unique object. But since craft materials and processes were traditionally produced by women, in the private sphere, both for utilitarian purposes and as a wholesome way to avoid “idle hands,” Alvarez’s instinct to place the work under glass lends a sense of melancholy to this suspension: evoking the experience of the protagonist in Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, the delicate, feminine, traditionally crafted works “struggle to breathe” under their objectification. This treatment of the work as rare and precious also provides a contrast with the relatively humble materials she uses.

Orly Genger, Mr. Softy, 2005

Gina T. Alvarez, recollect, 2010

Like Stacia Yeapanis does in her freeze-frame emotional portraits, Alvarez memoralizes each object, simultaneously preventing us as viewers from entertaining our instinctual desire to touch it. This tension is inherent in the piece: Alvarez has noted that her work is more about her own desire to touch while making than it is about inviting the viewer to do so.

In creating work like Strategic Recreation, Shelby Donnelly “began looking at art historical paintings of leisure and battle scenes. I wanted to create a leisure scene that took on a the physicality of being socially awkward…I think of the picnic blanket as a place for leisure, a social battle ground…a place where strategy is needed.” Indeed, in one of the most famous paintings of a picnic in history–Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)–there is an unsettling dynamic between the figures in the foreground (a nude woman sitting with two clothed men, who seem to be ignoring her). Donnelly’s bold juxtapositions of color and texture (which often incorporating paint with fabric) oddly-stretched shapes, and punctuations of kitschy materials evoke uncomfortable, even physically painful, feelings. Her use of traditional textiles like doilies are more than poignant than sardonic, and part of a process of unraveling art’s idyllic and heroic ideals.

A similar tension between materials is also at work in Mike Andrews’ woven wall hangings. His use of synthetic yarn is an effort not just to democratize his materials, but to elucidate their shortcomings: “Craft-store yarn is both a cheap and tender material…[it] is generally intended to be a comforting, nurturing, and tactile experience, but the reality is that its inherent sentimentality is completely manufactured,” Andrews says. He is interested in how these materials evoke the uncomfortable feelings that may arise when one receives an unattractive, shoddily made homemade gift. But this work is not solely driven by material–his initial process utilizes Photoshop collages and abstract drawings

Shelby Donnelly, Rainbow Love, 2009

interchangeably, and his use of tapestry technique is as much about its ability to “have a dialogue with painting, sculpture, or common domestic objects.” Recalling decorative wall hangings (particularly from the ‘60s and ‘70s), Neo Geo painting, and the abstractions that arise from enlarging pixels in a digital image–as well as referencing the seasonal-color whims of fashion–the work encourages multiple readings and potential uses, straddling conceptual boundaries between art and ornament, offering, as Andrews hopes, “moments when the pathetic transforms into something powerful.”

The technical definition of “fuzzy logic” relates to a branch of mathematics called “set theory,” in which collections of objects, rather than individual items, are classified and studied. In popular parlance, we might understand “fuzzy logic” as “decision-making with imprecise data,” as defined by answers.com, and/or a way to solve “problems that have many solutions rather than one,” according to PC Magazine’s online encyclopedia. Interestingly enough, “fuzzy logic” was conceived in the mid-’60s by a computer scientist attempting to develop handwriting recognition software. Since our handwriting has nearly endless variations, it would be impossible for this software to operate with binary (i.e., “true/false”) user input.

Mike Andrews, Lemon Menace, 2009

Even in a technology-driven world, our lives are full of “imprecise data.” As the artists in Fuzzy Logic navigate between the realms of “art” and “craft,” other spheres emerge and overlap: rare and common, public and private, masculine and feminine, handmade and machine-made. The work in this exhibition does not exist in an either/or realm of any kind. Its intangibility–its literal fuzziness, its lack of hard-edged qualities–encourage us as viewers to rely on our emotional intelligence, however imprecise, rather than quantifiable definitions and prescribed ideas, as we interpret its myriad meanings.

5A U G U S T 2 3 – S E P T E M B E R 2 9 , 2 0 1 2

GINA ALVAREZ

HEATHER CORLEY

DEB DOUGLAS

EXPOSURE15RE-DOMESTIC

shared attributes in common. There is a non-traditional approach to your studio practice. Much of your work is material based often, making use of found objects. I also believe there is an underlying narrative in all the work. Some of the narrative themes I see connecting your work are domesticity, love, loss and nostalgia.

IntervIew: May 29. 2012, Schlafly Taproom, St. Louis

ArtIsts: Gina Alvarez, Heather Corley and Deb Douglas

IntervIewer: Terry Suhre, Director of Gallery 210, UMSL

terry suhre: When I started putting together this project I considered you Gina, Heather and Deb because I felt your work

EXPOSURE 15: RE-DOmEStic is the latest in a series of group exhibitions designed to feature artists

who live and work in the St. Louis metropolitan area. The Exposure series originated with the

St. Louis Art Gallery Association in the late-1990s and was housed at Hunt Gallery on the campus

of Webster University. Gallery 210 took ownership of the series in 2005 with Exposure 8. Since then

it has become one of the gallery’s most anticipated programs. This year Gallery 210 is proud to

present an exhibition of work by Gina Alvarez, Heather Corley and Deb Douglas.

The title “Re-Domestic” is from a dinner discussion with Gina Alvarez, Heather Corley and Deb

Douglas from May 2012. Over the course of the evening common themes of gender roles, methods

of working, conceptual foundations, inspiration and aspiration for their work began to emerge.

“Re-domestic” was a response by Deb Douglas, after the conversation turned to the problems of

balancing professional and family responsibilities, to the question of defining domesticity. This off-

hand remark resonated with me. “Re-domestic” seemed to me a concise description of the shared

commonalities and ambitions of these three artists.

Outside of political or economic contexts domestic is defined as: of or pertaining to the home,

the household, household affairs, or the family: domestic pleasures, devoted to home life or

household affairs. As subject matter the idea of the ‘domestic’ emerged in the late 1980s and

1990s, growing from theories associated with the mid-20th century Feminist Movement and

conceptual art practices. Much of this work addressed issues of gender roles, relationships and

beauty that were for most part the topics at the center of our dinner discussions.

“Re-domestic” within the context of this exhibition is the subversion of traditional gender roles

by employing art-making activities that filter domestic craft, associated with femininity, and high

art, associated with masculinity, through contemporary feminist theories and conceptual art

practices. The pieces in the exhibition exploit to greater or lesser degrees the paradoxical

experience of attraction and repulsion and reveal the transcendent experience that can result from

repetitive activity. They are all concerned with beauty. The works by Gina, Heather and Deb connect

us to a history of skilled production and feeling, touching on the nostalgia of loss or absence,

of filling a need for something to which there is no longer a lived connection.

The following is a transcript of the dinner conversation. It has been edited to fit the space

available in this publication, to allow for a coherence of expression to facilitate, as much as

possible, the flow and naturalness of the conversation.

Terry Suhre, Director, Gallery 210, UMSL

July, 2012Gina Alvarez, the formula, 2012. Mixed media.

what you are presenting is the idea of the ideal. And whether we adopt that individually or we adopt it as a culture, it’s force-fed. I think playing with that concept and putting it in front of viewers is powerful.

hC: One thing I just wrote down that relates to both of you, and myself as well, is the “expectation of free will.” The idea that people have free will and the expectation to control it and believe what it is supposed to be. That expectation of free will; it’s like love or nostalgia or anything. It encompasses things like the pushing and pulling of “I want it. I’m repulsed by it. So I am going to embrace it.”

heAther Corley: Those [themes] actually are in almost all my various artist statements.

Deb DouglAs: Mine too! I thought did I write that because love, loss and disappointment were a big part of a lot of things in my work for a long time.

ts: Gina, your work stands apart from Heather and Deb’s a little bit.

it. I think sexuality is where my work comes in. So my work is like sexuality bucking domesticity.

hC: It depends on the context. If you are talking culturally or art historically, through materials or through the intention of the material itself. There are certain books I think about in the context of my work like On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, by Susan Stewart, and Domesticity and Dirt, by Phyllis Palmer. Palmer’s book is the history of women and domestic servants in the United States from 1920 to 1945. It puts them in the context of TV, film, and art, the home itself, as domestic servants as “materials.” I think that’s part of loss, that’s part of nostalgia. It’s part of taking something that is seen as almost dirty because it’s gender-based. Instead, why not embrace it?

ts: How does this relate to your work?

hC: The materials I use are the things you encounter everyday. I just change the context in which you encounter them. They are all things that are used and then often discarded. With the piece I am making for this show, I am creating hanging tags like you would find on a present or a price tag or on any number of things, with screenprinted patterns from security envelopes. I’m not exactly sure of the title, but right now it is certainly uncertain. I’m utilizing the three answers to

everything, one answer hanging from each form, “yes”, “no” and “maybe.” When the viewer encounters the piece, I want them to respond personally to the environment. The questions are up to the viewer.

ts: I want to Ask Gina when we talk about issues of domesticity and sexuality and how does one turn back on the other?

gA: So, how does my work address the bucking of domesticity and sexuality? Actually it embraces sexuality more so than domesticity but I think the way it does that, especially with the bell jars, with works on paper and not framing them and using materials, you know, having that image come off the paper. It creates this desire within the viewer to touch it. So, in that way there is this thing you desire but you can’t really have. I think there’s a dichotomy of like caging a wild animal or not having the freedom to be the beautiful thing that’s inside the jar. I think women feel that stronger. I think through process, I think through printmaking, I think through sewing, and by having this intimate moment that is purely my own I can imbue all of that stuff in those central objects that actually have multiple purposes. If you think about what they could be, they could be a child’s toys, they could be pleasure objects, they could be objects found in nature or they could be simply the materials they are.

They cross all of those aspects. Also humor is important.

DD: I like what Heather says about how she embraces the idea of domesticity because it’s a word I have always skirted very consciously. I use images from a very domestic time in the history of women in this country. I use them but I don’t ever talk about them. I think it’s kind of a reclaiming, I guess, and I also like what Gina said about the beautiful thing you can’t touch. I use images of women who represent what I can’t even begin to attain. I mean to me they represent so many things that I can’t get my head around myself.

gA: I think we all struggle with the idea of the ideal. I think that

gInA AlvArez was born in

racine, wisconsin. she received

her b.A. from the College of

Charleston in Charleston,

south Carolina where she

focused her attention on print-

making and costume design.

gina moved to st. louis in

2000 to pursue her Masters in

print making and drawing at

washington university. she

completed her degree in 2002.

since grad uation, gina has

pursued her nterests in the

arts both as an artist and an

arts administrator. she has

exhibited her work extensively

in st. louis, as well as Chicago,

new york, washington D.C.,

south Carolina, and washington

state.

Gina Alvarez, pruning (detail), 2012. Mixed media, dimensions variable.

3

EXP

OS

UR

E 15: RE-D

OM

ESTIC

gInA AlvArez: Well, it definitely engages the same issues but for me there is some sexuality [in my work]. I think domesticity is tricky because it’s kind of loaded negatively, although I think that’s a part of our discussion. But I feel domesticity is defined in a certain way -art historically- and that is where I have trouble with

ts: Is there a pleasure principle at work?

gA: Yeah, there’s a pleasure principle but I think for me the pleasure principle is more on my end as a maker than it is for the viewer. I want to create a beautiful surface. Like I’m

DD: I know what you’re saying but it might be simpler than that actually. Many years ago, and you’ve maybe seen my work from this time period, I would use animal imagery because animals were a way to explore my own emotions from a distance. So I could put a picture of the dog up. The dog looks sad or lonely or whatever and the dog was me but nobody else knows the dog was me. So now I‘ve been using images of women in a kind of similar way because they represent different things for me. One [woman]

looks scornful. And I like that because she’s vindictive and angry or powerful and [another] one looks very seductive. I like that because that’s kind of power or control, too. So they stand in for me in a really personal way about experiences I can be distant from. I don’t always feel like I connect to those women because they’re too pretty, they’re models, they’re beautiful, they’re from the 60s, etc.

hC: I have a question about one [of your works] I saw recently. It was a work in progress, the

one with a black eye. Using that nostalgia through advertising, showing a woman what she should strive to obtain… what the man desires her to be. She is so perfect and with the black eye.

DD: I think if you saw the painting in person you would see that’s not the case, there isn’t a black eye. But I do like that kind of unbalance. It seems okay on the surface but underneath it’s not. You know that there’s something not quite right. Like even to the point of just manipulating the marks on the surface so they’re not quite right or too perfect. Messing them up basically. But I like that idea and I try to use images that will lead the viewer in a way. I have an image I’m working on now. The woman is looking very sly. So I placed a wolf in the image with her because I thought she looked very wolfish, which is mostly a guy kind of attribute. So [I am] kind of playing with those ideas. I like what you’re saying. It’s deeper than that.

hC: My interpretation being female would be different than that of a male viewer. Seeing a wolf with a woman looking sly is going to look very different.

gA: It seems predatory

hC: Maybe it’s context. Most of my friends are male and that may inform the point from which I was looking at that. Because of the amount of time I spend with them, I’m more able to

see things through their eyes. I wouldn’t be as aware of their male perspective.

DD: I agree completely. With female friends I often feel I am on the outside looking in at a group. I feel more comfortable around the company of men. It’ s just easier to talk to them. Sometimes I sense competitiveness with other women that make me uneasy. So the women in my images automatically set up this duality. To me they’re really compelling but also they’re a little bit scary.

ts: When you start your work is there a specific problem you’re addressing or trying to solve? And then is there a particular set of responses you are trying elicit from people?

gA: My agenda is there. I want to make something beautiful. I want to engage in that conversation about beauty.

hC: Because [the word] beauty is so loaded?

gA: Totally. Beauty is loaded. I actually don’t think it has to be loaded and I think that people can appreciate beautiful things. I think it’s loaded from the art context because of [art historical and critical ideological] fascism. {I feel] You can’t tell me what beauty is! What my beauty is! (laughs) But I’m going to tell you what beauty is from my point of view and I’m going to beg you to want to experience it. I think my agenda is a bit that.

heAther Corley was born in

houston, texas and was raised

in st. louis, Missouri. During

her pursuit of a bachelor of Fine

Arts she attended hartford Art

school in Connecticut, Parsons

school of Design in new york,

and received her degree in

Printmaking at the university

of Missouri st. louis in 2004.

After receiving her MFA at

university of tennessee

Knoxville in 2007 she returned

to the st. louis area. she

exhibits extensively in the

st. louis region, nationally

and internationally.Heather Corley, unlucky (life), dAte. Losing scratcher lottery tickets, glitter, glue, mat board. 16”x 17”

4

EXP

OS

UR

E 15: RE-D

OM

ESTIC

actually using wood in these pieces. I’m using walnut. I don’t have a lathe but I’m essentially turning the wood, just differently. So I’ve created my own way of doing it and I’ve blown the minds of the men in my family and in my life. So within that it’s really important for me to make something that transcends the original function and the original process. I think that is where some of the original materials come in. It’s books, paper, its printed material, and it’s fiber that’s been printed on a way you wouldn’t necessarily expect.

the multiple, I never thought

about the multiple. I thought

about the obsessive mark making

on the plate. That’s where I really

had a good time. By the time

I made multiples I was like, “ I

don’t care anymore.” What I think

is interesting about myself is

Using stitching as drawing, there is all those ways to push the perception of how something should be used.

ts: Another commonality is each of you makes use of found objects.

hC: Sometimes they are found or accumulated, and sometimes I recreate them. There is beauty in the process of collecting and creating. I think beauty is very empowering because it’s something every person reacts to, no matter if it is a positive or negative response. I think all three of us do so through materials… especially through materials. Something can be so grotesque that when I look at it, it’s beautiful and I want to touch it or even lick it. Beauty can be all encompassing and not just defined as something that is aesthetically pleasing. Beauty is, I think, a big part of what is appealing in everything we make because it is visually seductive. It draws you in, and then may be disarming, beautifully seductive and tactile, through material and concept and craft. It draws you in and then you may feel awkward with it.

DD: What I like about working with found objects is that it’s already there. If it’s a scrap of paper or a postage stamp or whatever it is I am looking at, what’s so great about it is that it already has a history built into it. It comes already loaded for me. And I really like that because it

is a springboard to jump off as opposed to creating something completely from a blank piece of paper, where you are starting from your own conception. I feel like I need that. It will, kind of, set the mood for the direction I want to take the piece based on what it is.

gA: I guess in terms of my material choices and my idea of the found object, I don’t know… I mean is a piece a paper that comes from a child’s journal a found object?

DD: I think so

hC: Yeah

gA: For me it’s just a material choice. It’s not necessarily a conversation about using the ready-made or found object. It goes back to the idea of nostalgia. It goes back to the idea of there being some sort of presence that’s not my own. But ultimately it’s cut up. For instance I was in Kansas City this week and found some purple lame fabric in the dumpster. But nobody will know that I found that.

hC: But does it matter?

gA: No. What I’m saying, although for me it’s not a conversation about the found object or the ready-made. It’s a conversation about materials regardless of what those materials are. They could be cherry pits. For example, I’ve collected all the shaving from cutting PVC pipe that

actually looks like snow. It’s an opportunity to redefine what the cast-offs are. That’s my agenda in picking materials and also those are the materials that transcend what people thing they are.

ts: What are your influences? You all seem to have some affinity for conceptual art, in particular through the use of repetition and process.

gA: For me it is. It’s born out of being a printmaker though. There is the concept of the multiple. If you approach printmaking in a traditional sense it is the ability to reproduce that singular item. So for me the multiple is linked conceptually to producing an edition of variance. Regardless whether they’re flatworks on paper or three-dimensional objects. In my world they all exist as prints.

hC: I agree with that totally. I think I found printmaking because I’m obsessed with the multiple. I like things in mass. I like an enormous amount of multiples in one thing. Like at the hardware store, the bucket with thousands of bolts, the same exact bolt, I find really appealing. But it is the idea of multiplicity and repetition, I think, is why I found printmaking. Even though my work is informed by printmaking it isn’t necessarily or predominantly print-centic. The idea of the multiple is a very sensual thing. I’m so drawn to that. If something is good as one it is just fantastic as a hundred.

Not necessarily only as a print but as an object or as an image.

DD: It’s interesting that you guys are both coming from printmaking because my minor was in printmaking. The one thing I actually enjoyed about printmaking was not necessarily

Heather Corley, certainly uncertain, 2012. Insulation foam sheets, adhesive, vinyl spackle, latex paint, screenprinted cardstock, cotton string. dimension variable. 5

EXP

OS

UR

E 15: RE-D

OM

ESTIC

creative partnerships, and the opportunity for space to work. That’s partially why I started making parts that create a whole because they’re smallish, I can do them where I am.

gA: So to redefine domesticity.

hC: By what it means now.

DD: So we’re re-domestics.

ts: How does this new idea of domesticity relate to earlier ideas of “women’s work?” What I am referring to here is historically women with servants and leisure who chose to pursue the visual arts were relegated to the crafts.

hC: I guess it depends. I tend to only look at it from a mostly historical standpoint. I think [of these activities] as an extension of drawing and it’s something I’m drawn to. I think, that because I am female it’s more acceptable for me to embrace it because I am female. When I use embroidery, it’s mark making. Cutting with an Ex-Acto knife, it’s drawing.

ts: So conceptually you are not connected to the issues and conversation on “women’s work.”

hC: I am connected to it in practice. I understand and think about it, but from a personal standpoint of what I’m doing. However it’s not what drives me to create work. But it’s important to know and appreciate.

DD: When I was a graduate student I wanted very

when I make the images I do now I draw obsessively. So if I do the line drawing over the photograph I draw it small. I trace it and a blow it up bigger and then I trace the back and I transfer that. I do that same drawing like hundreds of times to get this one thing. That’s so satisfying.

hC: I think that’s a commonality between all of us. Like what you will see in the exhibition [of my work] is probably the tenth or fifteenth manifestation of what you’re seeing. Not only the forms themselves that are growing from the wall but the tags also. I obsess about everything. Everything has already been made or tried out probably ten times. I find the process in itself satisfying. That obsessiveness… it feeds into the material, it feeds into the concept, and it feeds into the actual exhibition itself. It’s satisfying my own desires and obsessions and it makes me happy because I can obsess about this and I can get to what I desire, but still keeping the work open and engaging. That’s what I want.

gA: For me the repetition is more controlled. It’s a little more meditative. It is also the chance for me to talk about time. Repetition is not necessarily in mass like the way you think of hundreds of items accumulating but they are kind of marks accumulating. So it’s a time reference. Those are the things I think about when I use repetition and multiple.

ts: Gina, does your being a mother change your relationship to time?

gA: Totally. That’s how these soft sculptures started. I’ve always had a sewing interest. My grandma was a sewer. I was a double major in costume design and printmaking. Although I didn’t complete costume design, I worked in the theatre. I worked

behind the scenes stitching costumes, and so there was a lot of that training in me so when I graduated from graduate school, I didn’t have access to that equipment. I had a show a Forest Park Community College and I’d just had Oscar and so I had to make this work but I had to make it during [Oscar’s] naptime. We have a one thousand square foot

house. It’s super small and my studio is in the basement. You can hear everything in the house so I would put him to sleep and then I would go down there and I started making these small, intimate, (and) quiet (pieces). I wasn’t running a press. I wasn’t drilling anything. I wasn’t hammering anything. I wasn’t sifting. I was quietly sitting and producing. Using the tools I that I knew I had in me to produce the marks akin to the kind of marks you would make in a print studio. Using all that conceptual process knowledge. Knowing full well that concept comes out of process.

hC: I completely agree about concept coming out of process. That’s how I approach (my work). The way to concept is through process, and process is driven by concept. It [concept] can be hidden from you until you pull it out. I would agree that a lot of my work from the last few years comes out the same kind of thing, enormous changes in living and studio situations affects the work and the process.

DD: The same thing happened when my son was born a long time ago. My work got really small because I worked at the kitchen table. I also learned how to work in half-hour increments on something small as opposed to grad school’s eight hour days of working on and on.

hC: My studio schedule is driven by my teaching, my family, my deb douglas, tart, 2012. enamel on digital print. 43.5”x 56”6

EXP

OS

UR

E 15: RE-D

OM

ESTIC

I’d say in hindsight, more sort of traditionally feminine [kind of works], and I think that’s interesting. It’s just how my trajectory went. But in terms of materials and craft and how I relate to that I’m grateful for being able to have the choice to work anyway I want and with any materials I want.

gA: I actually love the idea of engaging in both the fine

speak on a personal level? What about an artist’s responsibility to communicate with people?

hC: I only know about my experience.

ts: What do you want them to know about that experience?

hC: It’s not that I want the viewer to know anything. I want people to bring something to the party and look at themselves

consciously to make big, heavy, what I kind of thought of as masculine kinds of painting. I really like raw, de-constructed construction. It was something I very consciously wanted to do… to be a big painter like that. It was only after I got married and my son was born that I started wanting to do more intimate kinds of works. And I guess

art world and the craft world. Backing up to the original question of craft duties delegated to women, my experiences as a child really formed my interest. My dad and both my grandfathers were woodworkers so there was a wood shop in every house I frequented. My grandmother was a seamstress so she would make my clothes for me. I think there was a certain empowerment in that. We would go shopping and I’d pine after something and she’s say “Ah, we don’t need to spend your money on that. We can make that. And she and I would go to the fabric store and we’d pick out the pattern that closely resembled the item that I wanted and we would pick out the fabric and then we would make it together. So early on I understood the power in being a maker and having the opportunity and the ownership in making that thing yourself and being prideful and wearing it.

hC: It’s almost the exact opposite reason why I make things. The basic reasons end up being the same. But how you got there is different [from me]. My mom did paint and draw some when we were very young, but my mom and grandmother don’t sew. I probably have a kind of false nostalgia for “women’s work” as a childhood influence. I think the reason I started making things as a child was because I had a strong desire to create things, and not an activity I was taught as being female.

gA: Just in terms of craft, because I think craft is important. For me it’s important to have the conversation that fine art can be craft and craft can be fine art. I think for me beauty and the lack of functionality of the object plays a really strong role in that conversation. It doesn’t necessarily have a functional purpose that is crafts based but is employing craft-based processes.

DD: That is what is so great about today. After the 60s and when the crossover [between craft and fine arts practices] occurred. Like Peter Voulkos and other artists who were making things specifically non-functional [began] to break those boundaries. I mean that was amazing. We used to have the argument when I was in school,” Well, are you a painter or are you an illustrator?” It was with such derision. That this question [was asked]. But at the time it is “Well, we’re painters!” But now that has totally evolved and the best painters I know are illustrators. The point I’m making it is that there isn’t that boundary anymore.

hC: I would argue that craft [in the broadest terms] has always been at the center of everything throughout art history.

gA: It depends on the context of craft, the context of action if you’re talking about in the context of art itself. I think we can talk about it in all those

contexts, anthropologically, tool making. Craft is important. There is power in knowing how to make something. In terms of craft, it’s labor intensive. I guess that’s where I see it. Craftsmanship and labor are inexorably linked.

ts: Deb, I am taking this from your artist’s statement, what does it mean . . . to create meanings and relationships that

Deb DouglAs received M.F.A.

southern Illinois university at

edwardsville, Illinois and her

b.A. truman state university,

Kirksville, Mo. since 2000 her

exhibitions include: the Perlow-

stevens gallery early spring

exhibit, Columbia, Missouri,

sCC Painting Invitational,

Curated by Christine A. holtz,

st. Charles Community College,

six, Mad Art gallery, st. louis,

Contemporary Art Museum,

st. louis, open studio tour and

exhibition, hanley building Art

show, st. louis, and Duane

reed gallery, home grown,

st. louis. she is also active

as a curator and juror. deb douglas, Lonesome (einsome), 2012. Ink, watercolor and collage on paper. 11”x 14”

7

EXP

OS

UR

E 15: RE-D

OM

ESTIC

differently. I’m not judging them or giving them the answer. I’m asking them to experience the work and reflect on their own experiences, as I have. When I make work like the insecurity series, I used the interior of security envelopes. It’s exposing those truths that we all hide, securely tucked away from prying eyes. I think it’s a larger question. I’m fully aware you come to the work from a different place than I do; I count on that.

DD: I have personal relationship experiences I make art about. I’ve had a lot of ups- and-downs relationship wise in the last few years. It’s a way for me to translate what I’m experiencing into something concrete. Because I don’t always trust my head in terms of what I’m feeling and I often don’t really know how I’m feeling. I can’t really get in touch with that. So making work about some of these experiences through other figures and other juxtapositions of imagery is a way for me to say this is about that experience. That’s how I make something I have no relationship to personal in my own meaning.

hC: Are you saying “Look at me, but don’t look at me?”

DD: Yeah. I hadn’t though of it that way but that’s possible. I hope people like my work but I don’t make my work for other people. I just make it because it’s a way for me to say what’s in my head.

gA: There are poetics. For me my work exists in a space that has words and is [also] void of words. It’s that liminal, in-between, space. What happens in a space that is definable and indefinable is that it’s ultimately experiential, because that’s your visceral response to most things. The head is not there, the heart is not necessarily there but the opportu-nity to respond to feeling is there, because it’s in its purest form. In terms of defining what it means to create meaning and relation-ships that work on a personal level, that’s hard because I think those moments are ultimately indefinable. There are not words to put to that. I think our art is an opportunity to give those moments space. So the ability to verbalize to those unspoken things is probably where some of the work exists. I guess that’s why it’s hard. And maybe it’s because we’re women. I think [women’s] brains are different [from men’s]. So for me the response that I elicit from the viewer hopefully exists in that verbal/non-verbal

space. That ability to create poetics and something quiet, something beautiful, something that is ultimately intimate. I can share an intimate experience with a stranger.

hC: How would you define your work in that context?

DD: That reminds me of Terry’s question of “What do you intend for your work to do?” That’s what you’re asking, right? I want the viewer to come to my work and say, “Oh, that is such an interesting and appealing way of putting all those things together in one space. A lot of times they don’t really get the answer. They don’t get what’s going on in my head about a specific work. To me it means something very specific and to most viewers, they don’t see that. So for me I rely on the formal qualities of the work to carry that. The content is for me. I’m not trying to be cryptic. People aren’t in my head so they don’t get that. I try to work in tandem with having a very conceptual base but also having a really strong formal element that hopefully carries that. That question, “What do you intend for your work to do?” I don’t know how to answer that.

gA: To take over the world!!

AcKNOWLEDGmENtS

This exhibition is supported in part by the Regional

Arts Commission, the Center for the Humanities,

and the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.

Gallery 210 wants to thank and Schlafly Bottleworks,

St. Louis for their support of this exhibition.

GALLERY ASSiStANtS: Steve Furrow, Lavette Tolliver,

Dee McClarney, David von Nordheim, Veronica Ross,

Chancellor Thomas, and Douglas Buchanan

GALLERY 210 ADViSORY cOmmittEE: Ellen Curlee,

Richard Hunt, Isaac Douglas Kirk, Dr. Louis Lankford,

Margaret McDonald, Evy Paton, Katherine Rodway,

Barbara Savan, Gretchen Schisla, Fawn O’Connor

and Dr. Susan Waller

BROcHURE DESiGN: LaBreacht Design,

Asheville, North Carolina

PRiNtiNG: Midtown Printing, St. Louis, Missouri

GALLERY 210 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI—ST. LOUIS

44 East Drive, TCC, One University Blvd.

St. Louis, Missouri 63121

HOURS Tuesday–Saturday, 11:00 a.m.– 5:00 p.m.

GALLERY 314.516.5976 OFFicE 314.516.5952 FAX 314.516.4997

EmAiL gallery@umsl.edu WEB www.umsl.edu/~gallery/

8

EXP

OS

UR

E 15: RE-D

OM

ESTIC EXPOSURE15

Gina T. Alvarez 5234 Miami apartment A

St. Louis, MO 63139

314-210-9300

ginatalvarez@hotmail.com

ginatalvarez.com

Education

2002 MFA in Printmaking and Drawing, Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art, Washington

University, St. Louis, MO

2000 BA Studio Art, Printmaking emphasis College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina

1992- 1994 University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point. Stevens Point, Wisconsin

Solo Exhibitions

2013 Where Do You Sleep, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO 2011 Poems by Bobby Thiel, Sheldon Art Galleries, St. Louis, MO

2009 New works on paper, Pele Prints, St. Louis, Missouri

2008 New works on paper, Morton J. May Foundation Gallery, Maryville University, Chesterfield, Missouri

your love is kindest, PSTL Window Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri

2007 Sketches for the Future, Contemporary Art Gallery at Forest Park Community College, St. Louis,

Missouri

2004 About Place, Redux Center for Contemporary Art, Charleston, South Carolina

Selected Two Person and Group Exhibitions

2013 Within a Revolving Landscape, Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis, MO

Collabrations: Works from Pele Prints, Mad Art Gallery, St. Louis, MO

Aqua Miami, Pele Prints, Miami, Florida

2012 Ideas of Order, Center of Creative Arts, Millstone Gallery, St. Louis, MO

Exposure 13, Gallery 210, University Missouri St. Louis, St. Louis, MO (August 2012)

Avenue of the Arts, Public Commission, Kansas City, MO (June 2012)

2011 Other Life Forms, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI

A is for…., Center of Creative Arts, Millstone Gallery (Curator and exhibiting artist)

A Conversation in Contemporary Craft, East Central College, Union, MO

Fine Line, Art St. Louis, St. Louis, MO

Let’s Talk About Love Baby, Craft Alliance, St. Louis, MO

Show Me Your Tax Bracket, Aisle One Gallery, St. Louis, MO

Next Art Fair, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, Illinois

2010 Blanco Museum, Ubud, Indonesia

Museum Nasional, Jakarta, Indonesia

Reduced and Reclaimed, Dog and Pony Projects, Buffalo, New York

2010 Fuzzy Logic, Des Lee Gallery, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Interface, COCA’s Millstone Gallery, St. Louis, MO

Next Art Fair, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, Illinois

2009 Artist In Residence Exhibition, Craft Alliance Grand Center, St. Louis, MO

Sift, Measure, Cultivate, Fontbonne University Art Gallery, St. Louis, MO

Next Art Fair, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, Illinois

2009 Grand Opening Exhibition, Hoffman LaChance Contemporary, St. Louis, MO

Slinger 2, Boots Contemporary Art Space, St. Louis, MO

2008 New Faces of Craft, Boileau Hall, St. Louis University, St. Louis, MO

An Associates Degree in Science, Liv Ullman, Anaerobic Digestion, Post-Psychiatry, Open Lot,

St. Louis, MO

Assorted Printmakers, Gallery F.A.B., University Missouri St. Louis, St. Louis, MO

2007 Experimental Kitten, Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts, St. Louis, MO

From Flat to Phat: New Dimensions in Printmaking, Arts Incubator, Kansas City, Missouri, and

Gallery100, Tempe, Arizona

Women on the Move 2007 (Featured Artist), Visio Gallery, University Missouri St. Louis, MO

2006 Flat Files, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO

Fresh A.I.R., Noyes Cultural Arts Center, Evanston, Illinois

2005 Untitled: A Mixed Media Installation, Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts, St. Louis, MO

Floating: A Group Exhibition, Alternative Space, Charleston, South Carolina

Artist in Residence: A group exhibition, Anchor Graphics, Chicago, Illinois

2004 Printmaking: A Contemporary Tradition, Schmidt Art Center at Southwestern Illinois College,

Belleville, Illinois

Contemporary Printmakers Invitational Exhibition, St. Louis Community College at Meramec,

St. Louis, MO

Women Only, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO

Fiberart International Biennial (Juried/Traveling Exhibition), Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania, Museum of Arts & Design, New York City, and Bellevue Museum, Seattle, Washington

St. Charles Community College Multimedia Invitational, Donald D. Shook Gallery, St. Charles, MO

Residencies and Awards

2013 Artist in Residence scheduled at Forsyth School, St. Louis, MO

Community Artist Training Institute

2012 Grand Center Visionary Award, Emerging Artist

Critical Mass Stimulus Grant

2010 Missouri Fiber Arts Grant for Study Abroad

2009-10 Pele Prints collaboration, St. Louis, Missouri

2009 Best Local Artist by St. Louis’s Riverfront Times publication

2009 Artist in Residence, Pyramid Atlantic, Silver Springs, Maryland

2008-09 Artist in Residence, Craft Alliance Grand Center, St. Louis, MO

2004 Artist in Residence, Anchor Graphics, Chicago, Illinois

Artist in Residence, Redux Center for Contemporary Art, Charleston, South Carolina

2002 Wildwood Press Emerging Artist Grant, St. Louis, MO

Collections Southern Graphics Council International Archive

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Purina, St. Louis, MO

Pyramid Atlantic, Silver Spring, Maryland

University of Iowa Center for the Book & Special Collections, Iowa City, Iowa

Anchor Graphics, Chicago, Illinois

Hake Investments, St. Louis, MO

Washington University Special Collections, Olin Library, St. Louis, Missouri

Nancy Kranzberg Spiritas Center for the Book, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri

Bibliography Art Mavens, Alive Magazine, September 2012

A is for…., Book accompanying the Exhibition, COCA, St. Louis, MO

Pie Crust Magazine, Sugar and Salt, Fall and Winter Issue Volume 1: Issue 1

Studio Break, A Conversation with Artists Podcast with David Linneweh, December, 2011

St. Louis Beacon, Arts and Life, Ivy Cooper, March 9, 2011

Riverfront Times, “St. Louis Art Capsules”, Jessica Baran, March 17, 2011

Riverfront Times Best Of St. Louis 2009, Best Local Artist Jessica Baran, October 28, 2009

Riverfront Times, “St. Louis Art Capsules”, Jessica Baran, November 18, 2008

Over and Over Stitch, A Review of Gina Alvarez & Jana Harper at Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts,

Jessica Baran, November 2005 (online review)

Charleston City Paper, “The Home Front”, Caroline Saffer, Volume 7, Issue 52, August 18, 2004

The Post and Courier Preview, “From ‘A’ to ‘B’ at Redux”, Catherine Brennan Hagood, August 5, 2004

Pulp, “Stitchin’ Time”, Alice Winn, April 22-29, 2004

Professional Experience

2012 – Present Executive Director VSA Missouri, Statwide Organization on Arts and Disabilities

2012 – Present Co Director Yellow Bear Projects, St. Louis, MO

2009 – 2012 Gallery Director St. Louis Artists Guild and Galleries, St. Louis, MO

2010 – 2012 Education Director St. Louis Artists Guild and Galleries, St. Louis, MO

2005 – 2009 Printmaking Instructor, St. Louis Community College Forest Park, St. Louis, MO

2002-2005 On Site Program Director, Washington University School of Art and Architecture Study

Abroad Program