Artist Statement
November 2010
I see my work as being in flux, ever-changing, mutable, and replicating various states of proliferating growth.
When I was in high school I made several trips to Summerville, GA to visit the artist Howard Finster. On one of the first trips, I found myself alone walking down a mosaic pathway leading into his Paradise Garden. It was a hot day and bees were buzzing around one of his sculptures that looked like a lumpy pile of tar with snakes crawling on it. A sign on the piece read Serpents of the Wilderness. A real duck was sitting underneath a broken tv which was resting on a toilet. I then came up to a gigantic structure that seemed to be made of hundreds of old bikes, lawn mowers, and metal toys that were welded together. The rickety structure wrapped around a big tree. Vines were growing up all the sides of the monstrosity.
As I walked closer, I saw there was an entrance. I ventured inside the dark doorway and found myself completely immersed. It was a thrilling moment, in part because of the incongruity of the bicycles and metal parts jammed together around the tree, a kind of honoring and dishonoring at the same time.
Currently I live in a suburb outside of Philadelphia that was once a series of Quaker farmlands and untamed forest, but is now a place where sprawling strip malls and neighborhoods of suburban ranches are adjacent to dwindling wooded areas filled with deer. I often experience disparate overlapping objects: blue plastic sheeting covering an abandoned gas station sign adjacent to a once-pruned, now overgrown bush; a gigantic three hundred year old weeping birch tree at the end of a paved road encased by a eight foot high chain-link fence; plastic grocery bags caught on branches hanging above a backyard trampoline.
The idea of piecing-together disparate elements strongly informs my work. I have been making sculptural installations made of such incongruous materials as plastic shopping bags, felt, pipe cleaners, straight pins, and plastic electrical boxes since 2001. My work involves both the slow, plodding movement of patching pieces of cloth and plastic to linear structures made of pipe cleaners, as well as quicker, more gestural actions that connect all of the parts into systems, making large suspended sculptures.
The installations are drawings-in-space that cover, divide, encircle, and fill the spaces in which they are situated. Monumental in scale and intensely colored and textured, the work aims to physically affect the body of the viewer. These installations take various forms: parasitic-like growths that cover interior architectural elements and outdoors structures; hanging tent forms that immerse the viewer; suspended walls that curve and divide spaces; excessive, organic masses that transform rooms into caves.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
Maine College of Art, Portland, ME, Master of Fine Arts, 2001Brown University, Providence, RI, B.A. Visual Arts (Honors), 1989
Selected Solo Exhibitions
Hinterland, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia, PA, May 2010Flux, Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta, GA; April - May 2009
Layer City, The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, DE; Feb. - May 2009
Patch, Split Barrier, and Sinew The Abington Art Center, Jenkintown, PA; March - April 2008
Keeping It Under Wraps, The Powel House: Landmarks Contemporary Projects, Philadelphia, PA; March 2008
Patch, Suyama Space, Seattle, WA; May 2007
Whorl, Galerie Articule, Montréal, Quebec; January 2006
Summer Solos, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center; Atlanta, GA, June 2005
New Work, Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta, GA; March 2003
New Work, Mendel Music Library of Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; January 2003
Dressbodies, Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta; May 1999
Better Sight Without Glasses, Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta; January 1997
Eve Tree, Art in Odd Places, Arts Festival of Atlanta; Summer 1996
Selected Group Exhibitions
Hinterland and The Solace of Labor, Mitchell Hall, West Chester University, West Chester, PA, October 2010Seepages, Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta, GA, June- July 2010, (curated by Caroline Lathan-Stiefel)
Microfibers, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, Dec. 2009- Jan. 2010, (three-person show, curated by Sue Spaid)
Connect/Reconnect, The Gallery at Mercer Community College, West Windsor, NJ, October-November, 2009
Exuberant Pattern, Center for the Arts Gallery, Towson University, Towson, MD, October-November, 2009
(curated by Susan Isaacs)
Entracte, Bush Antiques, New Orleans, LA, Nov. 2008-Jan. 2009 (curated by John Otte)
In Suspension, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; July 2008
Hovering Above, The Abington Art Center Sculpture Park, Jenkintown, PA; June-November 2008
Matter, SPACE Gallery, Portland, ME; January-February 2008
The Hearing Eye, Centre Clark, Montréal, Quebec; March 2007
(traveling exhibition: Gallery 101, Ottawa, Ontario, April 2007, L'Oeil De Poisson, Quebec City, Quebec, May 2008)
Strands of Fabrication, Fe Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; April 2004
Running Rampant, Fe Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; February 2004
Projects, Islip Art Museum, Carriage House, East Islip, NY; August 2003
Personal Perspectives: The Center for Print and Paper Fellowship Exhibition,
Mason Gross School for the Arts, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; Jan. 2003
100 New Jersey Artists Make Prints, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ (traveling exhibition, 2002-04,
The Morris Museum, The Noyes Museum of Art, The Corcoran Gallery and School, Lamar Dodd School of Art (UGA),
University of Iowa Museum, Purdue University Galleries, Tweed Museum, Whitman College)
Awards
Independence Foundation Grant in Visual Arts, Philadelphia, PA, 2009 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2008-09Creative Capital Foundation Grant in Visual Arts, 2005
Sculpture Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, 2003
New Jersey Print and Paper Fellowship, Brodsky Center for Innovative Print and Paper, New Brunswick, NJ; 2002
Hilla Rebay Teaching Artist Award, The Guggenheim Museum Children's Program, 2001
Artist Lectures
Towson University, Towson, MD, November, 2009Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA, November, 2009
Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, October 2009
The Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE, March 2009
The Abington Art Center, Public Lecture, Jenkintown, PA; March 2008
Brown University, Lecture and critiques for junior and senior art students, Providence, RI; February 2008
Suyama Space, Public Lecture, Seattle, WA; May 2007
Galerie Articule, Public Lecture, Montréal, Quebec; January 2006
The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Public Lecture, Atlanta, GA; May 2006
Selected Catalogues
Patch: An Installation by Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, Essays by Helena Reckitt and Beth Sellars,Suyama Space, Seattle, WA; 2007
L'Oreille Dans L'oeil/The Hearing Eye, Essays by Sébastien Cliche and Jesse Lacayo,
Centre Clark, Montréal, Quebec and Gallery 101, Ottawa, Ontario; 2007
Immersion/Immersive: Exploring the Immersive in Contemporary Art Practice,
Essays by Marcus Miller, Susie Major, and Randall Anderson, Articule, Montréal, Quebec; 2006
Reviews
July 16, 2010, Urban, rural boundaries blur in exhibit, Catherine Fox, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, D6.Dec. 2009-Feb. 2010, Volume 88, Green Up!, Sue Spaid, etc Magazine, p. 12.
December 27, 2009, Review: Microfibers, Edith Newhall, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
November 4, 2009, Transcending Decorative, Martin L. Johnson, Baltimore City Paper.
May 2009, Vol. 28 No. 4, Review: Hovering Above, Andrea K. Hammer, Sculpture Magazine, p. 75.
April 17, 2009, Kaleidoscopic view of imagination, Catherine Fox, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
March 10, 2009, Mixed-media metropolis, S.D. Fender, The News Journal (Wilmington, DE).
Fall 2008, Young Approaches:Crossing/Crossing Out Categories, Warren Seelig, Surface Design Journal, p. 10.
March 23, 2008, Review: Abington Art Center, Victoria Donohoe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, p. L10.
New Year 2008, Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, R. Asher, artUS, p. 63.
July 2007, art ltd.: West Coast Art + Design, Pulse, p. 89.
May 24, 2007, Trash, Death, Mantle: Three New Shows Reviewed, Jen Graves, The Stranger, p. 20.
May 8, 2007, Intricate Netting, Adriana Grant, Seattle Weekly, p. 31.
May 18, 2007, There's an unsettling beauty to Lathan-Stiefel's Patch, Nate Lippens, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p. 36.
December 14, 2007, 2006-YR-Visual, Isa Tousignant, Hour, Montréal, p. 21.
February 2, 2006, State of the Whorl, Isa Tousignant Hour, Montréal, p. 22.
December 14, 2006, Parasites et Pression, Mathieu Menard, Le Delit.
Royak, Jacqueline, In Review, Surface Design Journal, Spring, 2005, p. 52.
September/October 2004, Strands of Fabrication, Petra Fallaux, Fiberarts Magazine, p. 52.
May/June 2004, Running Rampant, Scott Turri, Dialogue Magazine, p. 52.
April 28, 2004, Getting More Fiber, Mary Thomas, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. C2.
April 22, 2004, Living in the Material World, Alice Winn, The Pittsburgh PULP, p. 15.
March 11, 2004, The Sprawl of the Wild, Kurt Shaw, The Pittsburgh Tribune Review, p. 9.
March 21, 2003, Caroline Lathan-Stiefel: New Work, Catherine Fox, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, p. Q6.
June, 5, 1999, Dress it up, Cathy Byrd, Creative Loafing, Atlanta, p. 40.
June 4, 1999, Changing faces, Catherine Fox, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, p. Q7.
May - June 1997, Review: Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, Cathy Byrd, Art Papers, p. 56.
February 14,1997, Mind's eye puts forth artist's vision, Catherine Fox, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, p. P3.
Collections
Hunterdon Museum, Clinton, NJMorris Museum, Morristown, NJ
Newark Library, Newark, NJ
Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ
Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ
New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Trenton, NJ
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ
Zimmerli Museum, New Brunswick, NJ