Natalie Baxter, Selections from Warm Gun, 2014-2020 Alt Caps, 2017-2019; Bloated Flags, 2016-2020; The Squad, 2018. Fabric, cotton batting, polyfill. Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Natalie Baxter makes stuffed, quilted versions of objects often displayed in and around the home. Guns and flags—conventionally associated with power and patriotism—become soft and droopy, embellished with tassels and glitter. Baxter began sewing guns after she visited her home state of Kentucky in 2014 and saw a friend’s hand gun collection: an entire wall covered in weapons. Bright, flaccid guns do not offer direct commentary on gun violence, nor do bedazzled eagles make a definitive statement about nationalism. Instead, by transforming familiar items into sculptures both funny and strange, Baxter invites viewer to reflect on their own experiences with loaded cultural symbols.
Banners embroidered with incendiary texts recall an incident in 2016, when the alt-right website The Blaze published a story about Baxter’s Warm Gun series. The author described the guns as the work of a “feminist with too much time on her hands … to tackle the fake problem of toxic masculinity.” In response, Baxter rendered quotes from the article’s comments section—“this chick needs a good railing,” for example—as soft, stitched sculptures. Materializing language into colorful, tangible objects divests the words of their potency. Likewise, the presence of gendered language in the installation challenges viewers to think about how gender stereotypes might shape reactions to the works on view. The artist’s unexpected juxtapositions of color, texture, ornament, and symbol disrupt ingrained categories to proffer a more fluid vision of gender.
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Stephanie Kantor Trophy Wall, 2018-2020 Earthenware, glaze, cast bronze, cnc brass, patina, laser cut polyester, blue velvet, poplar
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Stephanie Kantor’s work explores domestic material culture, such as how families preserve memories through heirlooms and other keepsakes. Trophy Wall addresses conventions surrounding the commemoration and display of achievement. The project began with the artist casting bronze copies of the figures atop her father’s old tennis trophies. Kantor elaborated on the figures to make whimsical, irreverent versions of the originals, complete with proliferating balls and colorful embellishments. The irregular, hand-modeled clay surfaces gently poke fun at the tendency to aggrandize athletic prowess. The installation convincingly replicates a trophy wall one might find in a private home, but there are no references to the individuals who live there. Instead, empty frames filled with generic, hyperbolic text gesture toward a more public influence that dictates what types of achievements feel worthy of display.
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Ian F. Thomas second hand, 2020 Chalk, ceramics, found furniture and found china, knife-rest, oranges, 24-karat lusterware
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
An installation comprising paintings, handmade vessels, and found objects interrogates the motivations informing home décor and display, such as desires for upward social mobility. Historically, ceramic vessels served as markers of class, displayed in homes to convey status and worldliness. Exploring the role of the vessel as status symbol in Art History, Ian F. Thomas made three chalk renditions of the American artist John Singer Sargent’s portrait The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882). The original painting featured four young girls with two enormous Japanese vases, prized possessions of the wealthy Boit family. The prominent display of the vessels reflects the ways in which ceramics have traditionally signified so-called “good breeding,” as well as a troubling Western tendency to fetishize Asian material culture.
More so than any other medium, ceramics lead double-lives: they can be rarefied artworks or utilitarian objects. Undermining the already tenuous distinction between the two, Thomas mounts ordinary, dirty plates on the wall where one expects to find a commemorative or limited edition object. Handmade ceramic vessels are poorly painted, arranged on and around mid-grade antique furniture, suggestive of the ways in which aspirational design often falls short. Oranges are a playful nod to the history of Dutch still life painting, where the inclusion of citrus—imported from great distances—was the ultimate symbol of wealth and luxury.
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography
Photograph by Joshua Simpson Photography