Self Portraits

"Cyborg"

"My Misgivings"

"Pele"

The Middle of Everywhere

The Burren Annual “The Middle of Everywhere”

Burren College of Art 20^th anniversary alumni exhibition

BCA Gallery, Ballyvaughan, Co Clare

July 14 - August 8 2014

Opening on Friday, July 18^th 7pm.

Burren College of Art celebrates it’s 20^th Anniversary with an extensive alumni exhibition representing 40 artists from Ireland, England, the United States of America and South America, from Chicago to Mexico, New York to San Francisco, London, Dublin, Clare, Tennessee, Illinois and Utah. The work in the exhibition responds to the theme “In The Middle Of Everywhere” through painting, drawing, photography, video, performance and installation. The exhibition is located in the BCA Gallery and at specific sites throughout the campus and is curated by Dr. Áine Phillips who has taught sculpture at the college since 1999.

She comments “All the artists in this show have lived in the Burren and studied at BCA during their training either as Undergraduate, Masters level or Doctorate students and some as artists in residence and as visiting faculty. Their diverse work reflects a profound engagement with this place, its culture and identity, often through the lens of the outsider or the global citizen, networked and connected to everywhere but richly experiencing the effect of being somewhere in particular, the Burren, with all its specific qualities and singularity.”

The alumni represented in the show include many professional artists with significant international profiles such as Simon Bayliss (Cornwall), Colin Matthes (Wisconsin) and Mollie Douhit (North Dakota) who received the Hennessy Craig at the RHA in 2013. Brooklyn based Erinn Clancy’s work has been previously shown at the Guggenheim in New York, Lucy Stein (London) has been featured at Frieze Art Fair and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Rockstar Iggy Pop collects the work of Ben Roosevelt (Georgia) and Loren Erdrich (Brooklyn) has featured in Vogue Italia and exhibited with renowned masters Louise Bourgeois and Kiki Smith. Ken Fandell is collected by MOMA New York and MOCA Chicago. Irish alumni Emma Houlihan (Clare) has been commissioned by EVA and The Swedish Royal Institute of Art and Roisin McGuigan (Kerry) has exhibited at the Crawford Gallery Cork and MOCA Dublin.

Each artist included in this show has distinguished achievements in art, art education and cultural production. In “The Middle of Everywhere” their varied art works and projects explore notions of place and identity, connections across borders that are political, geographic, mnemonic and emotional. Many of the artists address their experience of BCA and the Burren... located on the edge of Europe but defined by connections to other spaces, centers and margins around the world.

List of Artists:

Jeffrey & Matthew Austin, Beki Basch, Simon Bayliss, Aoife Cassidy, Erinn Clancy, Marie Connole, Mollie Douhit, Collette Egan, Loren Erdich, Ken Fandell, Abigail Flanagan, Jan Pieter Fokkens, Stefanie Ford, John Freeman, Sean Patrick Gallagher, Arianna Garcia, Monique Given, Haynes Goodsell, Emma Houlihan, Eileen Hutton, Tracey Lee, Gail Madeuno, Hali Maltsberger, Colin Matthes, Roisin McGuigan, Jill Miller, Sean Naftel & Chris Attenborough, Joe O’Brien, Pam O’Connell, Beka Peralta, Jonathan Pivovar, Ben Roosevelt, Andrew Salomone, Lucy Stein & Shana Moulton, Zoe Shulman, Gala Tomaso, Ariel Williams.

MMAA 2014 MN Biennial Opening!

Here are some pictures from my recent opening at the Minnesota Museum of American Art 2014 Minnesota Biennial!  Check it out!  

The show runs until August 3rd, so go stop by and see it!  

For more information, please visit: mmaa.org

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Q:

Hi Zoe,

First, I just want to say congratulations for all your creative works, perseverance, and recent show.

I was taken in viewing Postmodern Tectonics on the floor at the event --- curious if it was a statement re: women’s role/recognition/positioning in the world. Very thought provoking. Bravo, whether or not.

Best always, Great Aunt Pam

A:

Dear Great Aunt Pam,


Yes, you're absolutely right. "Postmodern Tectonics" is a civil rights painting that represents a changing sociopolitical landscape. This piece uses both mapping and fractal geometry as visual metaphors for the uprising of marginalized peoples (women, in particular) within a changing society. Aesthetically, the work combines rigid Cartesian grids (maps) and complex geometric fractals to convey the essence of growth and change.  The carved fractal form spans out across the Cartesian grid like a growing shockwave, connecting all of the individual blocks in an relativistic fabric of changing design.  Like a society, the blocks work together as a dynamic whole.

The multiple carved levels represent a top-to-bottom hierarchy within the painting's surface.  In a society, this type of hierarchical structure is oppressive and only serves the few who have power at the top of the pyramid.  In order to express societal uprising, I used the illusion of color contrasts in the paint to contradict the literal sculpted surface.  Thus, the fractal "shockwave" is like a ripple of plate tectonics, moving from the ground-up, reversing the existing top-down hierarchy.   Ultimately, the piece captures the impetus of an uprising, showing all of the visual components of change occurring within an unequal society.

The color choices were very deliberate.  The fluorescent orange represents the fiery movement underneath the surface - like magma, it is a flow that pushes and pulls at the surface, evoking the passionate unrest and turbulence within the piece.  The white is like a powerful light-force, harmonizing the physically separated blocks into an expanse of love and togetherness.  The very subtle green and peach tints create figure-ground contrasts that optically contradict the uneven surface and level the landscape into the appearance of flatness.  For me, the sense of flatness represents a state of equality between different bodies.  Through love and togetherness, the lower blocks ascend to a higher hierarchical plane.  The overall "pinkness" of the piece can be read as femininity and the perseverance of womankind.

In my senior thesis (linked bellow), I discuss the historical context that lead to my painting's development: and essentially, the work fights the patriarchal mode of modern painting that dominated the Western world from the end of the Victorian era, all the way through to the 1960s.

My work follows in the footsteps of the postmodern neo-avant-garde movement, challenging the dogmatic expectation that all paintings must be hung on walls to achieve a state of objective truth.  By presenting "Postmodern Tectonics" on the floor, I wanted to allow the viewer to engage differently with the painting's surface... As both a female and feminist painter, I am also very sensitive to the way paintings are presented and how they create a power dynamic between the viewer and the artist.  I didn't want to force myself onto the viewer with self-righteous notions of perception and experience, like many machismo-modernists did with their large canvases and gestural bravado.

Instead, I wanted to provide the viewer an opportunity to use their bodily subjectivity to investigate the work in an intersubjective act of sharing.   As the viewer surveys the aerial landscape, they discover the shifting surfaces moving in and out of illusionistic, sculptural and architectural spaces.  The viewer's body literally becomes a part of the work, empathetically including them in the experience of growth and change.

My only regret is that I did not cite enough women artists in my senior thesis.  I primarily blame myself for not being more thorough.  But secondly, I blame my educational institution for not exposing me to more female painters in my art history courses.  Currently, I am making an extended effort to dig up women who resonate with my artistic practice.  Thankfully, I have already found a few, but even with an art history background, I will say - it is difficult to unearth those gems who have been deliberately buried by patriarchy.

Love,

Zoe

http://zoeshulmanstudio.blogspot.com/2013/09/senior-thesis-postmodern-tectonics.html

Here is some press for the show from The Star Tribune and MPR's The Current!

Some Idears...

So, in light of being super busy preparing for the MN Biennial, I haven't gotten to doing much painting.  But, I have made a couple of useful sketches during work time breaks.  I recently bought a Rhodia dot pad and am loving the ability to make linear designs without the confusing disruption of gridlines.  I'm pretty excited about the conceptual yield from some of these sketches!   

Check it out: 

(This is a drawing of a recent dream that I had.  Could I make these spaces into specific places, as well?)

Lebbeus Woods.

Truncated squares

Some computer programs to note: Blender, Minecraft, Glitch, Game of Life... 

Mandala map?

Trembling tiles.

Stretching the grid.

Wrapping the grid.  (Dreamcatcher)

Digital topography?

Hmm...  it's at the tip of my tongue.  Still not quite there.

Prototype I

Prototype II

Prototype II (detail)

So, after three failed prototypes, I am certain my next drawing will succeed.  I know all the kinks and understand exactly what my next move will be.  I'm so close!

Almost done with the successful prototype!  Just need to finish inking it.  I will do a few more renderings and work out the last details that will make the perspectival design fully seamless within the Cartesian grid.  Next step: planning the more specific compositions and substrates for the paintings.  

More soon!   

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P.S.  Oh.  My.  Gosh.  I was mulling around my studio and found this old drawing that I did when I was 13. Wow, apparently I knew what I was doing before I knew what I was doing.  What a trip.

I wish I could go back in time eleven years and give myself a high five :3