Familiars: Valerie Hammond and Kiki Smith
September 21 - November 3, 2018
Opening Reception: September 21, 5-7pm
This exhibition of two internationally renowned artists fills all three galleries with their printed works. Familiars demonstrates the uniqueness, as well as the intersections, of the printmaking practices that Smith and Hammond have developed as contemporaries and friends over the last twenty years.
Throughout their time working together, Hammond and Smith have supported and discussed each other's explorations in print, gathering experiences, ideas, and images. They have also co-taught printmaking at New York University and Columbia University, and have traveled together to multiple residencies to work on prints. Their cooperative working and planning is often an expansion of their individual explorations as artists. They share in common a sense of wonder of the power and mystery of the natural world, and regularly discuss their visual ideas, technical problem solving, the physical power of art and its impact, stories, life, and the shared joy of scratching on copper. Printmaking is essential to both artists' work.
The work in this exhibition encompasses the plants and animals that occupy the landscapes in which Smith and Hammond have been immersed, living in New York State as well as in their travels
Artist(s)
Valerie Hammond, Kiki Smith
"...printmaking is such a profoundly culturally influential process, but it is mostly a process that enables you to think in a kind of layered manner—like to see that information is layered, with pieces built up on top of one another, and that you can come in and make decisions and then re-evaluate those decisions and then change it and then make another decision, etc. It’s very process-oriented and to my mind a really wonderful example of how to think about things or how to see things in life." -- Kiki Smith, in an interview for Conflict of Interest.
"Even familiars are driven by the unfamiliar." -- Amy Lilly for Seven Days
Sponsors
James E. Robison Foundation
People's United Bank
Gunnel Clarke and John P. DeVillars
David and Letitia Richardson