Caitlin McCormack "Babylon Rec Room"
Caitlin McCormack "Babylon Rec Room" 2023
Mixed Media Fiber Art Vintage wallpaper on salvaged drywall with hand-crocheted cotton string and glueembellishment
Dimensions: 13 x 12 x 3.5 inches.
Unique
Signed on verso by artist
Philadelphia-based fiber artist and educator Cait McCormack has contributed works to solo and group exhibitions at Elijah Wheat Showroom, Field Projects, Hashimoto Contemporary, The Mütter Museum, Museum Rijswijk, The Mesa Contemporary Art Museum, The Taubman Museum of Art, The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Feinkünst Krüger, Blah Blah Gallery, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Future Fair, and BravinLee Programs in NYC. Their sculptures have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Hyperallergic, BOMB, Juxtapoz, Whitehot Magazine, Smithsonian, and Bust Magazine. In addition to holding teaching positions at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Hussian College of Art and Design, McCormack has participated in artist residencies at The Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts, The Peter Bullough Foundation, The Wassaic Project, Byrdcliffe Artist Colony, Kimmel Harding Nelson, and The C-Scape Dune Shack Artist Residency Program in Provincetown, MA. McCormack was the recipient of a Joseph Robert Foundation grant in 2021 and received the Woodmere Art Museum's Maurice Freed Memorial Prize in 2023.
Artist Statement:
"My work externalizes experiences with mental illness, dysmorphia, and assault, producing a taxonomy of emotive vessels. Exploring queerness, isolation, and existential dread through an uncanny, sometimes humorous lens, I contemplate societal reluctance to legitimize gendered craft and regard crochet as a behavioral response to apocalyptic conditions. Inspired by folkloric botanical motifs, institutional osteological displays, sci-fi/body horror cinema, and an abundance of time spent alone with an overactive imagination, each object is an unraveling relic of a thought, tethered to a surface and made viewable at a distance.
Through the use of hand-crocheted cotton thread that is dredged in glues and foraged pigments, I am able to fashion soft materials into rigid sculptural forms. The transformative act of generating and stiffening each unit into a static composition recontextualizes moments of despair and rage as ornate, provocative, or comical specimens. Heavily obscured by overgrowths of crocheted string, fibrous vines, and lace-like flowers, the integrity of these objects is reinforced by complex networks, just as we are all strengthened by the calcified scars of a lifetime of experiences.
This particular sculpture, belonging to a series of works crafted from salvaged drywall fragments, union-made mid-century wallpaper, and crocheted botanical embellishments, expresses my internal trepidations as a queer person existing in a volatile world and contribute to an ongoing conversation surrounding hierarchy, craft, trauma, and ecology." - Caitlin McCormack
Read more about her artwork and exhibitions on our website.