In this 2016 election season, the spirit of tilling the earth is a metaphor for living, for acting on what is positively possible. VICTORY GARDEN is a portfolio of collectable graphic t-shirts created by a group of artists, curators and printmakers including Louise Eastman, Jess Frost, Tara Geer, Katie Michel, Wendy Small and Janis Stemmermann.
VICTORY GARDEN is a Russell Janis Autumn Project.
For more information go to the VICTORY GARDEN shop
Contribution to the Planthouse Portfolio: LIGHT, WEIGHT
“It’s exciting to work with an artist who experiments with materials and methods to achieve new and unique images through the printmaking process. In our COCHINEAL Collaboration, Louise Eastman wanted to use the cochineal dye in the etching press. We made a matrix out of wool felt that could be soaked in the watery dye solution and then passed through the press. For her upcoming exhibit Louise expanded on this technique to print on a wool felt panel. Editioned in the Russell Janis studio, the artist was able to achieve thirty-six shades of color in one print. The pigments saturated the soft wool felt, so when folded and placed in a portfolio box, the image can be seen from both sides."
"Titled LIGHT, WEIGHT, the portfolio includes Louise’s felt print and a set of four silk-screened prints on paper by Heather Watkins augmenting their two-person exhibit RESERVOIR at Planthouse Gallery, 55 West 28th Street, NY NY 10001.”
- From Russell Janis, www.russelljanis.com
Opening Reception for RESERVOIR Thursday, May 19th 6-8pm, exhibit up through June 26th. For more information go to Planthouse.net.
Life today is very bewildering. We have no picture of it which is all-inclusive, such as former times may have had. We have to make a choice between concepts of great diversity. And as a common ground is wanting, we are baffled by them. We must find our way back to simplicity of conception in order to find ourselves.
– Anni Albers, 1937
Planthouse is pleased to present RESERVOIR, an exhibition featuring the work of Louise Eastman and Heather Watkins. Taking the idea of a deep, often unseen or unnamed source as point of departure, the exhibition includes new weavings, drawings, sculpture, printmaking, and ceramic work. The word reservoir evokes the idea of a place that holds what we value, need, and want to protect—a back-up store of energy, that, if well-tended, might serve as a lasting life source. The works in this exhibition form a kind of materials-based-conversation between Eastman and Watkins, drawing upon influences such as the work of Anni Albers, Agnes Martin, Tantric Painting, and Gee’s Bend Quilts. RESERVOIR opens Thursday, May 19 and will be on view through June 26. A limited edition collaborative print portfolio published in an edition of 15 by the artists will accompany the exhibition.
Louise Eastman is an artist working in weaving and ceramics. For RESERVOIR, Eastman weaves sets of long, highly detailed pieces on a floor loom, and contrasts them with clay bricks that frame smaller weavings and knit pieces. The work is a continuation of her previous large hand weavings and cast bricks, and reflect the lyricism that comes from an embrace of the tactile, of materiality. Eastman further explores the profound politics of materials and craft traditionally considered trivial, or gender bound. Eastman received her MFA from Pratt Institute, NY, and has recently shown at Silas Marder Gallery, Russell Janis Gallery. Previously, she received a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She lives and works in New York City.
Heather Watkins’ work explores the nature and possibilities of the drawn line – materially and symbolically. Working with ink, cord, thread, cloth, and paper, she submits these materials to many cycles of saturation, compression, intertwining, and transference. Through these physical processes, she investigates phenomena such as flow, stasis, circulation, and gravity. Her work takes many forms: sculpture, drawing, text-based work, printmaking, and artist’s books. Watkins’ artwork has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including at PDX Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; Portland Art Museum; the lumber room; and The Art Gym, and is held in private and public collections including the Portland Art Museum, the Miller Meigs Collection, the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer, and Portland State University, among others. In her work as a book designer, Watkins has created artist’s monographs for the Cooley Gallery at Reed College, and the New Museum, New York. Watkins holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.
“Last spring, when Louise Eastman and I finished our COCHINEAL Collaboration, we started talking about working with indigo. Knowing nothing, it seemed the best place to start was to plant seeds so we could have the original source to work with. Over the summer, we each did our own experimenting with the elusive indigo vat while Russell tended the garden ensuring an indigo crop. That September, while we were conversing about printing the actual indigo plants, Louise texted me a photo of a marigold she had smashed onto fabric with a rock. That imprinted yellow glow became a note-to-self for the future."
"This March, our LUMUNATION exhibit has been supplanted by grow lights, flats of soil and seeds, cultivating marigolds for the next print and color investigation.”
- Janis Stemmermann
From russeljanis.com, see original text here.
Through November at Russell Janis Gallery, 292 Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11211.
Alexander's Store c.1990 / TILES by Louise Eastman, 2015
Inspired by the iconic wall of Alexander’s Department Store on 58th and 3rd Ave, Eastman has created her latest body of work TILES. Each tile is hand built, press mold, and cast in porcelain. They range in size from 10x10 to 12x12 inches. This project evolved from her 2014 project BRICKS where she cast a new piece a day.
Alexander’s Department Store was demolished in the early 1990's.
THE BIG SHOW 9 at Silas Marder gallery, is reviewed in The Sag Harbor Express. Dawn Watson says…
“Louise Eastman, who usually creates large-scale weavings that bring to mind circa-1950s brightly colored woven potholders, chose to approach her “Big Show” work in textile form. Having recently taken to working on a loom, she set out to weave her smaller canvases, ‘as surrogates for the paintings themselves.’”
THE BIG SHOW 9 is on until June 20, 2015 at The Silas Marder Gallery, 120 Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, NY. For more details: info@silasmarder.com.
Read the full review “Small Scale in a Big Show at Silas Marder Gallery in Bridgehampton” on the The Sag Harbor Express website.
Eastman will be included in a new group show, THE BIG SHOW 9 at Silas Marder gallery, May 17 to June 20, 2015. Join us at the opening reception on Sunday, May 17, from 4 to 8 with The Peter Watrous Trio from 5-7pm. The Silas Marder Gallery is at 120 Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, NY. For more details: info@silasmarder.com.
With a bag of cochineal Eastman brought back from a trip to Mexico, the insects ground up and simmering in a pot, she began a collaboration with Janis Stemmerman, experimenting dyeing and printing in the studio. Starting off with dyeing yarn every shade of red and then repeating the circle square motif from her clay tiles, they printed on felt, silk and and wool gauze. Cochineal, the tiny bug that feeds on the Nopal cactus, has been cultivated in Mexico for centuries, exported by the Spanish to create the classic red colors we know today in a wide variety of cultures. The results of the April 2015 collaboration are series of one-of-a-kind pillows, scarves and a knitted blanket.
Through April, 2015, at Russell Janis Gallery - 292 Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11211.
Eastman was a participant in SEIZING THE MOMENT: Social Activism and Policy-Making in the Wake of Ferguson featuring the ALL RISE exhibit.
Princeton University and the Woodrow Wilson School’s Bernstein Gallery presented a selection of powerfully relevant social justice-based art that sheds light on artists role as a catalyst for change, and art's role as an impassioned ode to justice. The collective work of the featured artists draws awareness to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which catalyzed a wider national movement in protection of black lives and demanding police accountability and reform.
