afterthought**

afterthought**
Artists' Talk:  Conversation with Ellyn Weiss
DC Arts Center 2/12/17

"Toxicity in the Air"
an installation to provoke awareness of pollution poisoning the atmosphere using recycled and repurposed materials with petroleum products...
(handmade paper using recycled paper and/or lint as pulp base, recycled tar paper, found vinyl cord)

additional elements:
Performance A
Actor stands at exhibit entrance and passes out face masks to all upon exit.
Performance B
Actor stands at podium wearing face mask reading statistics about air pollution

**refers to science/scientific method without incorporated scientific elements
    reconstructs empirical experience as science/scientific sample
    uses common pastoral landscape (clouds) to reference urban pollution




abstraction from a writers point of view
means shared language
like french or spanish or farsi or zulu
how many ways to say
whatever
are how many ways to say
whatever

writing
"abstract"
a narrative?
a vision?
a mind game
perception
how u look at it
how u see
reading
it

material-
a (first)  level of language)
texture
shape
form
color
pattern
line by
line





starting point:
Thanks
to DCAC, B Stanley, Phil and Mike for agreeing to show this body of work in the context of a retrospective...
to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for awarding me a fellowship based on this work.

the show title "January 15 - October 16" are execution dates and include all the work produced during that time with the exception of "Walk in the Park: Apartment Living" and "The Black Army," both on view at the Prince George's County African American Museum and Cultural Center.

Organized in three parts, it featured the installation "Toxicity in the Air," "3sided," a studio exercise and a PopUp Patrons' Boutique which represented the retrospective aspect with a catalog and miniature collages using paper dating back to my days at Eastern Market...

artist statement:
My practice integrates image, object and frame using abstraction to make pictures or settings that read as something familiar. My intent is to articulate issues of contemporary culture and art thru installations and objects that embody social and/or aesthetic ideas. I work to strengthen the artists' relationship with the public at large and to challenge how "fine art" is being defined for "ordinary" people.

random thoughts:
abstraction is a mind game         out the box/on the fringes    
      competition      literal vs allusion vs illusion        
                       being independent in the art world            necessity
the more people that understand a language the more effectively you communicate

Washington Post Review of Solo Exhibition

Reviewers are not necessarily critics anymore dissecting methodology and technical prowess. What is important to me is that a review provides lasting documentation of the work outside of the artist' own efforts. This is crucial for independent artists  because it creates a starting point for discovery and research by scholars and collectors alike... 

Mark Jenkins' review in the Washington Post this weekend:

Sheila Crider 

Making objects to represent unmaking is also Sheila Crider’s method in “January ’15-October ’16,” a show of paper, fabric and wood pieces at the District of Columbia Arts Center. The selection includes “Water Meditation,” whose blue triangles suggest ocean waves unfouled by mankind. The centerpiece, however, is “Toxicity in the Air,” a series that depicts poisoned skies and sooty clouds.

The notes for the show were written by none other than Ellyn Weiss, who commends Crider for addressing “the most critical issue of our time.” Like “Pestilence,” Crider’s work includes many hanging objects that cast foreboding shadows as they imply the universe above our heads. “Urban Runoff” arrays more than 50 grubby samples made from painted dryer lint. This crypto-scientific display recalls local artist Julie Wolfe’s jars of water collected from urban sources. But where Wolfe adds chemicals to elicit vivid hues, Crider offers mostly industrial shades of gray. Those blue paper waves offer just about the only color in this show that a 19th-century landscape painter might appreciate.

Sheila Crider: January ’15-October ’16 On view through Feb. 12 

District of Columbia Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW. 202-462-7833 dcartscenter.org/exhibitions.htm 

* correction: lint is varnished with acrylic but not painted.

("Industrial Smog" & "Urban Runoff" photos by Gregory Staley)

    

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/in-the-galleries-these-landscapes-are-something-short-of-idyllic/2017/02/03/e77610f4-e718-11e6-b82f-687d6e6a3e7c_story.html?utm_term=.16795a8cba2

his review of "Volume" in 2014

Sheila Crider

As she demonstrates with a series of monotypes now at Honfleur Gallery, Sheila Crider can layer complexity onto a flat image. But her show is titled “Volume” because of its other work, which comes off the wall more assertively than Jason Gubbiotti’s. The D.C. artist paints on a variety of paper, cuts the sheets into partial strips and then hangs them so that gravity chooses their contours. The artworks turn into banners, DNA-like helixes or — in the case of the brown-red “Volume 11” — sinews that suggest an anatomy textbook or a butcher shop.

Crider’s technique recalls Sam Gilliam, who began exhibiting unframed canvases in the 1960s. But most of Crider’s hanging pieces are snipped into thin segments, so they dangle rather than drape. The two artists also possess different color senses: Crider paints mostly in a single hue or a limited tonal range, relying on shape and light to vary the effect. Yet the acrylic pigment (and occasionally plasticized paper) gives the works a contemporary sheen. Where the artist’s attractively muted prints are largely in earth and rain tones, punctuated by an occasional red slash, her sculptural paintings boast a city-street vitality.

Volume: Sheila Crider On view through Dec. 19 at Honfleur Gallery, 1241 Good Hope Rd. SE. 202-365-8392. www.honfleurgallery.com.

("Volume #11 photo by Greg Staley)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/in-the-galleries-jason-gubbiottis-war-paint-at-civilian-art-projects/2014/12/03/040e8468-796f-11e4-9a27-6fdbc612bff8_story.html?utm_term=.96136a74c5aa