EAGLE TIME STAFF
BRATTLEBORO, VT — The Brattleboro Museum and Art Center (BMAC) invites the public to join artists Fawn Krieger and David B. Smith on Zoom on Thursday, Feb. 1, at 7 p.m. for a discussion of their work, which is on view at the museum in the exhibit “Home Bodies” through March 9.
Admission to the event, which will be moderated by curator Wendy Vogel, is free. To register to watch on Zoom, visit brattleboromuseum.org. A recording will be made available after the event.
Krieger, a ceramic artist, and Smith, a textile artist, share a creative approach: they layer and collapse physical materials and shapes to expand the possibilities of their respective mediums.
“The work in ‘Home Bodies’ draws us in with its playful use of materials. Both artists create visual languages that are experimental and improvised yet also soothing as a result of their repetitive and meditative nature,” said Sarah Freeman, BMAC’s director of exhibitions.
Krieger’s ceramic forms are pressed into concrete, creating the appearance of mud oozing and squishing up between bare toes. Her work often takes on characteristics of an archaeological site, where layers of earth are scraped away to reveal shapes that resemble vessels, domestic artifacts, furniture, even a decadent TV dinner.
Smith’s fiber works possess a comforting softness even as their bright colors and energetic patterns and textures keep the eye moving restlessly. Smith incorporates printed and woven imagery that lends his work a narrative quality, filling the viewer with curiosity about the stories he is telling.
The two artists conceived “Home Bodies” during the pandemic when the concept of “home” took on numerous, often contradictory meanings. Homes became places of isolation, refuge, entrapment and reinvention. Krieger and Smith consider the idea of home as a place of care and freedom, a place to dream and create. To them, home can be a person’s body and imagination, as well as the surrounding physical environment.
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