AN OBJECT'S PROMISE

the magical thinking we attach to our things

On view May 12, 2022 – June 14, 2022

Featuring works by Adrienne Shishko & Suzanne Moseley
Co-curated by Adrienne Shishko & Casey Curry

works by adrienne shishko

works by suzanne moseley

collaborative works

ADRIENNE

WORKS BY ADRIENNE SHISHKO

For An Object’s Promise, Shishko leans into her interest in how our attachment to and desire for objects can have detrimental effects both on our psyche and our world. Her totems, for instance, are created using reclaimed fabrics, asking viewers to consider what happens after we buy clothing we don’t need. And yet, as whimsical characters who reclaim and transform trash, they illustrate the subject playfully, embodying not punishment or shame, but a solution. This idea of creating a world with more room for hope than despair runs through Shishko’s work in the show.

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SUZANNE

WORKS BY SUZANNE MOSELEY

Moseley’s work in An Object’s Promise centers on a series of printmaking monotypes she created in celebration of her late husband. The layers for these prints were created through an intimate process of documenting personal artifacts and meaningful objects from their shared life, then abstracting and superimposing those images on top of each other with various printmaking methods including woodblock and screen printing. The results are densely layered compositions representing the vibrant, fragmented memory of their time together. The woven works are an evolution of Moseley’s work spawned by her collaboration with Shishko. In these pieces, Moseley repurposed her art, and later clothing, utilizing the same deer and bird netting materials used by Shishko in her practice.

COLLABS

COLLABORATIVE WORKS

Long time friends, Shishko and Moseley met periodically before the pandemic to create art together as a way of looking at their individual practices through a different lens. Both shared a process-driven approach and an orientation towards vibrant, energetic work, so mingling their techniques was exciting. During these improvisational art sessions, they each initiated work from shared materials, then switched midway through to continue working into the other’s piece. Shishko’s masses of discarded clothing, acquired from acquaintances, soon became a counterpoint to stacks of unresolved screenprints and cyanotypes contributed from Moseley’s studio. Cutting both bodies of material into strips and weaving through and around other found objects, the two identified an interesting tension between Shishko’s focus on our hollow, throw-away culture and Moseley’s attention to the hallowed nature of treasured objects. A new collaboration was born.

Two-Headed Dragoness

The collaborative dynamic between Shishko and Moseley’s works in An Object’s Promise is embodied most fully in their large installation, The Two-Headed Dragoness. This monumental assemblage represents both the dynamic energy of the two artists working together as well as the opposing forces people attach to objects: objects that look forward, imagining the future, versus objects that conjure the past, memorializing a treasured time, place or person. The Dragoness is made from a range of work created by each of the artists during their collaborative process. As they amassed this new body of work they realized that when combined and manipulated, the art as a whole became far more potent than the sum of its individual parts. Through the process, their understanding of the broader concepts and implications of their work was deepened and expanded.

Two-Headed Dragoness

mixed media, approximately 50” x 20’

$25,000

The Majesty of Trees

These two double-sided panels started as a single double-sided mural from Moseley’s Vibrant Memories series. The mural incorporates the industrial mold shapes that she and her late husband had purchased and assembled into massive wall installations in their refurbished, commercial mill building. His attraction to the fine craftsmanship of the molds came from his education as a Master Craftsman in Fine Woodworking. Moseley used these molds and other tree based imagery, to honor him, a dendrophile. But working in this larger format proved cumbersome for Moseley, so after extensive printing on both sides of a large mural, she put it aside to be resolved at a future date. The mural resurfaced In the beginning of their collaboration when Moseley encouraged Shishko to re-work the panel with her own materials. Shishko added paint and pastels to the images and then she and Moseley divided it into two long panels, cut the panels into strips, and wove the pieces into deer mesh. The final result is two vibrant flowing panels that stand with the majesty of trees.

ARTWORK

The Majesty of Trees

Screenprint with mixed media woven into deer net, two double-sided panels, approximately 114” x 32” each

$7,000 each or $13,000 for pair

Warrior

Warrior came together organically when the artists experimented with shaping their 2D woven pieces over wire armatures to create more fluid, 3D forms. To this end, Shishko draped one of Moseley’s woven pieces around a rusty, crushed tomato garden ring and the result immediately became figurative, reminiscent of a warrior, an archetype that resonated with both artists. Sword and crown like pieces, created separately by Shishko at an earlier stage, were added to the assemblage to complete the armor.