HOLD TIGHT: MADELINE NIETO HOPE
clothing tags
2 may to 14 june 2009
Artist Statement: Much of the work shown discusses thrift, economy, history and the systems that hold together and bind. I am drawn to materials that have qualities conducive to stitching, sewing and joining and I allow most materials to inform me of what order or system to apply them to. At times I hold tight for years to the materials that are interesting to me and wait until there is a time and place for that material to be processed, deconstructed, and reconstructed while being reflected upon, appreciated, and valued. When the materials are compatible with the medium, I commit to sewing, stitching, binding, washing, gluing, hammering, tying, pushing, pulling the material until the relevant questions and ideas begin to emerge. I have been using found, historically charged, materials to bring together the larger story about the family of material artifacts from our beloved past. These art pieces inform one another because they are a product, an outcome, of the industrial, mass production age. I hope to introduce fundamental, systems thinking, studies that are direct and accessible. When applied, each piece is simply the repetition and variation of a material and its medium. Beulah Gallery Hold Tight Installation reveals the relationship of the artwork and the physical space.