Shawne Major: Folie Ă Deux
Cecily E. Horton Gallery Lawndale Art & Performance Center Jan 18 - Apr 25, 2020 Shawne Major, Kismet, Mixed media, 62 x 59�, 2019.
Shawne Major Folie à Deux About & Bios
A reflection of the “interior world of intensely codependent relationships,” Shawne Major’s Folie à Deux invites viewers to engage in a shared psychosis composed of linear-shaped objects in tandem with organic line drawings to create mixed-media collages. By creating multiple overlapping and explosive layers with materials such as charger cables, ropes, holiday lights among others, Major mirrors the contradictory emotions of the human condition, allowing viewers to independently confront their own connotations of specific materials within the greater context of the work. By engaging these materials, Major interrogates how her compositions with the “messy and detritus” can function as metaphors for one’s own collective memory, often comprised of debris and ephemera itself.
Patricia Restrepo is a curator, writer, and researcher based in Houston, Texas. She is the Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), where she has worked for four years. At CAMH she has recently curated Stage Environment: You Didn’t Have to Be There and Dissent and Desire. Additionally, Restrepo has curated exhibitions and performance programming at Alabama Song, Hardy and Nance Studios, Houston Center for Photography, and Northset Residency. Fostering exhibitions as laboratories, her curatorial interests include the generative potential latent in archives, museology, and performative work.
Charles Schultz is the Managing Editor of the Brooklyn Rail. His art criticism has been published in numerous magazines and his Shawne Major is a contemporary mixedessays on artists have been commissioned for media artist located in Opelousas, Louisiana. artist monographs. Schultz lives and works Born in New Iberia, LA, she received her in New York. BFA in Painting from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and her MFA in Sculpture from Rutgers University. In 2008, Major exhibited in the Prospect. 1 New Orleans Biennial. She has grant awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Her work is in the collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute of American Art; New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art; the Hilliard Museum of Art, Lafayette, and Art in Embassies program, Brazzaville, Congo. Major’s work is collected nationally and she has been awarded artist residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yaddo and Art Omi, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Center. Central motifs in Major’s most recent works include memory, loss, fear, and subversion of “junk” materials into high art.
Essay by Charles Schultz
In the studio behind Shawne Major’s home in rural Louisiana, overflowing bins and piles of many shapes and sizes spread across the floor: computer cords, metal bracelets, cheap watches, necklaces, fake grapes, raincoats. Natural light enters through small windows near a metal roof, while artificial light pours forth from the clamp lamps attached to structural beams. Lined up in a row across the long wall are Major’s new works, each measuring about five feet by five feet, which is a little longer than the distance between the artist’s fingertips when her arms are outstretched. Their surfaces are mesmerizing. As you approach them your gaze hovers and swings, pivoting between recognition and amazement. The objects lashed to the surface become unfamiliar before your eyes. The density of Major’s layered surfaces is overwhelming, but it is her method of connection—where control meets improvisation—that is immediately remarkable. You sense the sheer force that must have been required to fasten these objects firmly to the substrate, to encrust them in a manner that appears deliberate and spontaneous at the same time. Major has been developing a vocabulary with this material and process over the course of her career; it has enabled fluency and confidence in compositional form that evinces choices of great nuance and subtlety. Her material intelligence is reminiscent of a line written by the poet Ann Lauterbach about Ralph Waldo Emerson: that one can sense a matrix of decisions resolving into manifestations of flow, circuits and cycles, relation and concordance. Indeed, Major’s quality of line comes from the same sense of intuition that was the primary facility of the abstract expressionists. And, like many of them, her compositional unity emerges out of an edge-to-edge accumulation that conjoins each individual gesture that she lays down. But for Major, the qualities of abundance and excess characterized by this type of composition are balanced by the slow, deliberate, and necessarily repetitious work of stitching. Two distinct energies become intrinsically bound; their unification generates the nature of order that is central to Major’s work. The works transform depending on your proximity to them. From across the room you feel the impact of bold lines that swerve and zag across passages of shimmering metallics. You feel the zest and dazzling immediacy of the forms. Their allure functions like a kind of gravity and, when within touching distance, your experience of dynamic form gives way to a protracted consideration of so much humdrum stuff. It seems unlikely that the crudeness and campy qualities of the artist’s base material could resolve into such glorious order, but all it takes to confirm this act of alchemy is to take a few steps back and look again. Much of the sensuality of the work depends on the material and, the more you allow yourself to take it in, the greater its range becomes. The transparency of sandy-colored pantyhose stretched across a section of beads and bracelets is particularly notable because of how it softens the hard objects underneath. By contrast, when the fabric is red vinyl, the objects it covers become defined by how firmly they press against the tight material; in that position, they seem somehow harder. It is like this throughout all of the work in a myriad of different ways, making it so clear that this is the work of an artist operating at a very high capacity.
Shawne Major Folie à Deux Q&A with Shawne Major and Patricia Restrepo
Patricia Restrepo: I am thrilled we have been able to continue our conversation through virtual means, despite the massive shift in micro and macro affairs that has transpired since we first connected.
the new idea of canvas. That’s basically how I got there with some inspiration from Richard Long and other artists. In ‘92, I was doing an artist residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, during which Richard Long gave an artist talk. Strategies of appropriation, remix, and This talk made me realize that I needed reactivation of extant material are of central my medium and my materials to be more concern to my curatorial work and research. connected to my experience and that paint I am compelled by the fusion of these tactics wasn’t close enough. So, I decided to lose in your work alongside your formal rigor acrylic paint but keep the objects. I needed and material density. I would like to start by them for a method of connection. Sewing learning more about your artistic practice. was meaningful to my experience. Detritus and stuff seemed to have a complex and Practice rich—even vernacular—kind of language. PR: How and when did you learn to sew? More artists are using detritus since we have so much trash and junk. Sometimes, Shawne Major: I’ve always sewed but in a very basic way. I don’t use a sewing machine I have specific personal memories about objects that I like to incorporate, but my and probably couldn’t sew any clothes I primary vocabulary as an artist is always a would want to wear. When I was a kid, we color palette. I mean, the formal concerns lived with my maternal grandmother. Her sisters and our cousins would visit, and they slightly supersede the conceptual, at least would teach me whatever craft project they on the top. In the works in Folie à Deux and were working on. I always drew and painted in the last few years, my abstractions have been leaning towards more linear drawing. and sewed and made things. So when I decided to stop painting in ‘92 and only use Materials like electrical cords and broken and obsolete cables, rope, necklaces are my the objects that I had previously stuck into lines; it bugs me that there are so many of acrylic paint, the method of connection these objects around and our species is so decision was obvious. I just didn’t feel like wasteful. glue had any meaning in the language I was developing and would explore for many PR: As you mentioned, you work in seriality. years. To sew my abstractions was an early What does the conversation between works decision in the evolution of my artmaking. in progress enable in your production Also, it flows at the right speed for my process? obsessive tendencies. SM: Partly, it’s a studio strategy. If one piece PR: What led to your decision to stop is stuck, maybe another will be flowing and painting in 1992? you can come back to the first one. But, also, I think of bodies of work as families SM: I started out as a painter and where some aspects are shared and some experimented with textures and objects are unique to the individual. I like to have stuck in the acrylic paint. At one point several pieces going at a time so that there is I decided that the objects were more a dialogue between them. interesting a vocabulary than the paint. I then needed a way to join the objects plus
PR: How do improvisation versus planning play into the compositions of your work?
SM: In general, I will use anything I can sew that isn’t too heavy and will not degrade fast. Some kinds of objects have symbolic value SM: Very little about my work is planned for me. Any kind of circle suggests portals except size and outer shape. I usually set or escape routes like sex, drugs, exercise, up a few rules at the beginning that can be music: anything that gets you out of yourself broken, but, mostly, my abstractions are a or your reality for a while. Fake grapes stream of consciousness. I think of walking suggest a number of things including fertility at night with a flashlight where you can only and class. Also, it reminds me of stealing see a few feet ahead of you. I like to think plastic grapes from my grandmother’s of the works as growing out from the first arrangements to chew on when I was a layer like mushrooms on a dead log. Only kid. Star shapes remind me of things that with more layers of fungus. I work on them are believed in but not seen. For example, for over a year or more sometimes and can’t when we were growing up, my youngest predict what they will grow into. I have an sister had bad eyesight and couldn’t see the idea of how I want them to feel but not stars before she got glasses. Plastic snakes exactly how they will look when completed. symbolize irrational fear. Again, when I was young my grandmother would kill all the PR: Your work is repetitious, requiring thousands of stitches to complete a body of snakes that came into our yard regardless of whether they were venomous. These kinds work. Do you have any rituals or habits in of stories and associations are mixed into my your studio or practice? vocabulary. The works are not about these SM: I always pin (draw) first while I am stories, but my vocabulary consists of these fresh in the studio and then sew for hours kinds of stories. afterwards. I listen to music when I draw and usually audiobooks when I sew. It seems PR: With your incorporation of junk, you like different parts of the brain are activated also question and destabilize bad taste. What do you think about qualifications by words and, when I’m drawing, I don’t around “taste”? want to hear a narrative. I typically sew 5-6 hours a day. I play banjo and it keeps my SM: I am very interested in what humans fingers loose. value. Lately, I’ve used a lot of used junk jewelry in my pieces. Through the Material Concerns intensive labor of my works, I like to change PR: This is great, thank you! Such poetic something worthless into something loved. language makes your process and Taste is all context. personality palpable. Material choices are clearly significant in your work, and I want to Conceptual Thematics turn to your thoughts around the materiality PR: You are from and based in rural of your work: Louisiana. Your work contains visual and You poetically incorporate objects with past process references to the region’s folk arts. What has this place taught you? And how lives. Can you speak to certain objects or could your work be considered placeworks that have had considerable energies specific? that affected you?
SM: I don’t think of my work as placespecific nor do I think I have visual or process references to folk arts, unless it’s a shared desire to make art out of what’s at hand and what I hope to be a raw and honest approach. I am from Southwest Louisiana so it must creep into my visual accent, but my work is not about Louisiana.
Folie à Deux
PR: I discuss your show at Lawndale. Your exhibition is entitled Folie à Deux, meaning a shared psychosis or madness between two people. This elicits two questions: First, there is your implied relationship with a viewer, a shared communal state united by your work. What do you hope for this connection with SM: I do want to add that there is something a viewer? about Southern abstraction.... I’m not sure Secondly, to me, your work mirrors the how to describe the work of me and my complexity of our existence, both collectively contemporaries as a group (because it’s not) and individually, that we often seek to except maybe the dense lushness of the simplify for the sake of survival and ease. Southeast’s landscape. Everyone is working Teasing out the often overlooked layers on their own ideas in their own language, of existence as opposed to disconnecting but there is something there. from reality, your work might actually be PR: I understand and respect your considered hyperreal. So, what delusions resistance to your work being linked or disconnections from reality do you think specifically to a place or mode of thinking. your work presents? I do find resonances in approach, even if SM: People can believe conflicting things. unintentional. I enjoy your thoughts on With this body of work I was thinking the lushness and density of the landscape specifically of gaslight situations where as connecting points you draw. There is conflicting realities are accepted. Layers undeniably something there, at least for of boundary loss and reconfigured me. I find the American “South” complex, understanding after trauma. I always contradictory, and contested. In keeping thought of my mixed media work as with William Faulkner’s proposal that the filters or lenses. The experiences and the South is not really a geographical space as understandings stick to this filter/lens, much as it is an “emotional idea,” I see a and we would only see what we expect shared sensibility with many artists working to see. Within this metaphor I create my in this region, particularly in approaches to abstractions. the everyday and the landscape. PR: Yes, people do—must, even—believe Can we talk about feminist production? conflicting things. Cognitive dissonance Your work lands within genres typically is a state we all share. Thank you for considered women’s work, including textiles, your generosity in sharing your work and quilting, and craft. Do you embrace this, thoughts with us, Shawne. overlook it, or try to subvert it? SM: I am a feminist, but my work isn’t about feminism. Like being Southern, I feel like it’s the accent for my visual language but not the subject of the work. My work is about perception and the difficulty or inability of humans to truly communicate with each other and one anothers’ realities. This is channeled and shaped through abstraction and metaphor.
Exhibition Checklist
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Copacetic, 2019 Mixed media (rope, plastic toys, ribbon, lace, yarn, fabric flowers, costume jewelry, phone chargers, electrical cords, and braid sewn onto vinyl raincoats, fabric and plastic poultry netting) 60 x 54”
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Kismet, 2019 Mixed media (rope, plastic grapes, ribbon, lace, yarn, vinyl raincoat, costume jewelry, phone chargers, electrical cords, and braid sewn onto fabric and plastic poultry netting) 62 x 59”
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Peccadillo, 2019 Mixed media (rubber inner tubes rope, plastic toys, ribbon, lace, yarn, gloves, costume jewelry, phone chargers, electrical cords, and braid sewn onto fabric and plastic poultry netting) 60 x 60”
05.
Bardo, 2019 Mixed media (rope, plastic toys, ribbon, plastic tarp, lace, string lights, costume jewelry, phone chargers, electrical cords, and braid sewn onto fabric and plastic poultry netting) 58 x 55”
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Billet-doux, 2019 Mixed media (rubber inner tubes rope, string lights, ribbon, lace, doll hair, vinyl rain coat, costume jewelry, phone chargers, electrical cords, and braid sewn onto fabric and plastic poultry netting. 60 x 65”
06.
Ennui, 2019 Mixed media (rope, plastic birds, ribbon, bobbins, buttons, lace, costume jewelry, phone chargers, electrical cords, vinyl raincoats, string lights and braid sewn onto fabric and plastic poultry netting) 58 x 55”
All works courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery.
Copacetic, Mixed media, 60 x 54�, 2019.
Peccadillo, Mixed media, 60 x 50�, 2019.
Billet-doux, Mixed media, 60 x 65�, 2019.
Kismet, Mixed media, 62 x 59�, 2019.
Bardo, Mixed media, 58 x 55�, 2019.
Ennui, Mixed media, 58 x 55�, 2019.
Mission Lawndale is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that engages Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time. About Lawndale believes in the role of art and artists to inspire and inform the world around us. By serving as an intimate gathering place to experience art and ideas, Lawndale seeks to foster connections between communities in Houston and beyond. Lawndale presents a diverse range of artistic practices and perspectives through exhibitions and programs, including lectures, symposia, film screenings, readings, and musical performances. Through exhibition opportunities, the Artist Studio Program, institutional collaborations, and the engagement of an advisory board comprised of artists, curators, and scholars, Lawndale seeks within its mission to support all artistic and cultural communities of Houston. Supporters Lawndale’s exhibitions and programs are produced with generous support from The Anchorage Foundation of Texas; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; The Brown Foundation, Inc./ Nancy O’Connor; David R. Graham/Felvis Foundation; The John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; The Joan Hohlt and Roger Wich Foundation; Houston Endowment; Kathrine G. McGovern/ The John P. McGovern Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; The Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation; the Texas Commission on the Arts; The City of Houston; and The Wortham Foundation, Inc. Additional support provided by Benjamin Berg/Berg Hospitality, Illuminations Lighting Design, Lindsey Schechter/Houston Dairymaids, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and Topo Chico. Additional support for Shawne Major’s Folie à Deux is provided by Emily Todd and Fredericka Hunter.
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