Press Room

New York, NY (October 24, 2017)

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) is pleased to announce the second cycle of Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field, a micro-residency/exhibition hybrid featuring alumni of MAD’s Artist Studios Program. Working in the Museum’s third-floor galleries to allow visitors a rare look into the creative process, artists Xenobia Bailey and Maria Hupfield will create large-scale, immersive, and community-engaged installations that challenge and expand the boundaries of traditional craft-practice.

Bailey, whose “funktional design” aesthetic pays tribute to the resourcefulness of African-American homemakers both historically and today, has arranged her studio at MAD to provide a contemplative space for relaxation and co-creation. Visitors are invited to meditate on her crocheted mandala-like wall pieces, composed of concentric circles that appear to pulsate or vibrate, and to work alongside the artist in a number of interactive workshops. Hupfield, a member of the Anishinaabe Nation at Wasauksing First Nation, plans to use Sacagawea one-dollar coins to produce Sacagawea Mail Coif, a wearable piece of armor that covers the head, throat, neck, and shoulders; the piece will be worn during a final performance at the conclusion of the micro-residency. Her studio at MAD will function as an interactive living laboratory for creation, meetings, and public discussion. 
 
“Both artists explore identity, histories, and ancestries through interdisciplinary projects,” said Danny Orendorff, MAD’s Curator of Public Programs and co-curator of the exhibition. “To do so, they draw upon performance, video, audience engagement, and the inventive use of fiber, which speaks to the history and mission of the Museum.”

As artistic practices become increasingly interdisciplinary, participatory, and process-oriented, museum exhibition formats must adapt to support the new ways in which artists are producing and presenting artwork. With Studio Views, MAD seeks to examine craft-based studio practices in an expanded, contemporary, and interdisciplinary landscape as a way to think critically about the field today. The exhibition is an extension of MAD’s Artist Studios Program, which likewise embraces the qualities of adaptation and the spontaneity of current studio practices, inviting artists and designers to engage with visitors while at work in galleries on the Museum’s sixth floor. Founded in 2008, the program has invested in supporting the careers of nearly 150 working artists.

“Having Xenobia Bailey and Maria Hupfield return to MAD to create new work in this innovative open-studios format marks a great moment for both the Artist Studios and our exhibition programs,” said Cathleen Lewis, MAD’s Vice President of Education and Programs. “It speaks volumes of the Museum’s commitment to artists, and underlines the importance of supporting them with physical space and resources.”

Alongside the gallery-situated studios is a Process Lounge featuring small displays of video, ephemera, research materials, drawings, and studio experiments, which aim to provide the public with a deeper view into the process and transdisciplinary interests of each artist. Studio Views also features the Point of View (POV) Gallery, co-curated by the artists of Cycle 1 and Cycle 2, who draw artwork and supporting materials from MAD’s permanent collection in order to contextualize their work within the history of experimental, forward-thinking studio-craft practices from the 1930s to the present. The POV Gallery highlights innovators who, like the contemporary artists creating new work at MAD, have expanded the field of craft and directly influenced the work of the featured artists.

Together, the studios, lounge, and gallery aim to offer visitors a more in-depth, personal, and behind-the-scenes look at the ways contemporary artists (and their predecessors) have used craft techniques to engage in critical conversations about identity, creative practice, and the effects of historical influence on increasingly hard to categorize forms of artistic expression.

Xenobia Bailey is best known for her eclectic crocheted hats, large-scale mandalas, and tents consisting of colorful concentric circles and repeating patterns. Her designs draw influences from the African-American homemaker and the vanishing multicultural African American, Asian, and Native American community of her birthplace, Seattle, and the 1960s funk aesthetic. Bailey has exhibited at venues including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the New Museum, the High Museum of Art, and the Museum of Arts and Design. Her work is in the permanent collections at MAD, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Allentown Art Museum. Bailey has been an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Society for Contemporary Craft, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, and was recently a Fellow for Socially Engaged Art at A Blade of Grass. In 2015, a large-scale mosaic installation of her work opened at the New York City MTA subway station at 34th Street/Hudson Yards. Bailey was an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2013.

Maria Hupfield activates her creations in live performance. She is interested in shared moments that open spaces for possibility and new narratives. In her work, these moments of connection are recalled and grounded by coded and recoded hand-sewn industrial felt creations. A member of the Anishinaabe Nation at Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, Canada, Hupfield is deeply invested in intersectionality, indigenous feminisms, race, gender, and class. Her recent traveling solo exhibition, The One Who Keeps On Giving, opened the thirtieth anniversary of the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. Hupfield is an alumna of the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and a Joan Mitchell Foundation recipient. Exhibitions include shows at the SITE Santa Fe Biennial, James Gallery, the BRIC Biennial, the Bronx Museum, Vox Populi, and Panoply Performance Laboratory. Hupfield was an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2012.

Studio Views is co-curated by Carli Beseau, Manager of Artist Studios and Docent Programs, and Danny Orendorff, Curator of Public Programs.

Leading support for Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field is provided by Marcia and Alan Docter. MAD also thanks Marcia Docter for serving as Trustee Chair for the exhibition.

RELATED PROGRAMMING

Workshop | Saturday Seminar: Solidarity Medallions with Maria Hupfield
Saturday, November 4, 2017 – 1:00 pm
$45 general / $35 members and students
3rd floor galleries
Tickets

Join artist Maria Hupfield as she teaches visitors how to design and hand-stitch personalized medallions to be worn on the body. Participants will cut and sew circular pieces of industrial felt, which they will then embellish with beaded trim and small metal cones hand-cut into geometric designs.

The creation of the medallions will be driven by conversations with Hupfield, an artist-in-residence in the exhibition Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field, who will lead a dialogue inspired by indigenous feminisms and ideas around cultural value. Specifically, participants will look at indigenous cultures and their relationships to history, the environment, colonialism, and capitalism.

Workshop | Saturday Seminar: Funktional Flower Arranging with Xenobia Bailey
Saturday, November 11, 2017 – 1:00 pm
$35 general / $25 members and students
3rd floor galleries
Tickets 

Join Xenobia Bailey as she guides visitors through the creation of floral bouquets composed of folded newspapers. These sculptural floral arrangements will be inspired by the 1960s and 1970s “funktional” African-American homemaker aesthetics that inform Bailey’s own practice. Visitors will have the opportunity to work in the artist’s gallery-situated studio within the exhibition Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field.

Floral sculptures, made out of recycled materials such as newspaper, offer numerous opportunities for artists in terms of economic resourcefulness and an inventive approach to everyday material. As participants work, Bailey will play some of the music that inspires her; she may even read a passage or two from an author who inspires her as well! This workshop is great for arts enthusiasts of all backgrounds who enjoy working with their hands and engaging in lively conversation.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) champions contemporary makers across creative fields and presents the work of artists, designers, and artisans who apply the highest level of ingenuity and skill. Since the Museum's founding in 1956 by philanthropist and visionary Aileen Osborn Webb, MAD has celebrated all facets of making and the creative processes by which materials are transformed, from traditional techniques to cutting-edge technologies. Today, the Museum's curatorial program builds upon a rich history of exhibitions that emphasize a cross-disciplinary approach to art and design, and reveals the workmanship behind the objects and environments that shape our everyday lives. MAD provides an international platform for practitioners who are influencing the direction of cultural production and driving twenty-first-century innovation, and fosters a participatory setting for visitors to have direct encounters with skilled making and compelling works of art and design. The Museum will be celebrating its Diamond Jubilee 60th Anniversary this year.