By Annette Hinkle
As an artist, Carolyn Conrad explores a wide range of unique mediums and methods in her work. From starkly surreal photographs of constructed rural scenes comprised of miniature handmade house and barn structures, to texture rich fabric-based pieces, or sculptural dioramas contained within wall mounted boxes, the work is both varied and intriguing.
But within the context of individual pieces, there remains an underlying theme that ties the body of work into a cohesive whole and each piece relates to the others in a way that offers viewers a larger, far more complex and sometimes, darker story than meets the eye.
In 2008, Conrad, a Sag Harbor artist, took top prize in Part II of the 70th Annual Guild Hall Artist Members Exhibition and as a result, will have a solo show of her constructions and photographs opening this weekend at Guild Hall. Titled “Simplify, Simplify” the show’s name is based on the credo of Henry David Thoreau and in it, Conrad pays homage to her New England roots as well as the Transcendentalists.
Thoreau, as most people know, lived a pared down existence in a modest cabin by Walden Pond, a structure which, in shape and form, is evocative of Conrad’s hand-built house constructions which are evident in so many of her pieces.
“I’ve been thinking of these houses like Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’ — a house is a place where you can act. You gather things, pull things together, unite ideas or relationships. I think it’s a metaphor,” explains Conrad, who once worked in architecture and loves the plain beauty of Shaker style structures. “I have such respect for craftsmanship and simplicity of form. Everything I do I seem to pare down and simplify.”
Perhaps that’s just what New Englanders are prone to do by nature, seeing how the region’s most famous writers embraced the “less is more” philosophy as well. Conrad explains that growing up in Acton, Mass., outside Boston, she was made well aware of the 19th century literary heroes of the area by her teachers. School field trips were to the homes of great writers like Thoreau, Emerson and Hawthorne, and Conrad even took swimming lessons on Walden Pond.
But in an ironic twist, the idea of simplification actually goes far deeper in Conrad’s work than one might first assume, and is a reflection of her New England roots in a much larger and far more personal sense. Another key component of Conrad’s art is the notion of home and hearth — the domesticity of women and their traditional work. In some pieces, Conrad builds an image using the most unlikely of mediums — dryer lint. In fact, it was “Zen and the Art of Helter Skelter,” a diptych constructed of dryer lint contained within wooden frames, for which she took home the top prize in the Guild Hall Member’s Exhibition.
Lint is prominently featured again in this show with “Folding and Hanging,” a compelling construction made of small wooden compartments each holding a neatly folded stack of sheets of dryer lint while a wire frame supports other hanging lint sheets, much like a quilt stand in miniature.
The work is an homage to Conrad’s mother, who passed down the domestic skills that mothers have long been expected to share with their daughters. Of course, Conrad came of age at a time when young women across the country were rejecting those tools of domesticity which they saw as representative of the limitations women faced in the wider world beyond.
“She made quilts, that traditional women’s art,” notes Conrad. “She gave me a sewing machine, and I was not interested in sewing. It sat around for a few years, until I was out of art school. Then within a couple years I started using that machine.”
When Conrad finally took to her sewing machine, it was not as a domestic tool, but as a professional one. Sewn constructions and fiber art have remained a part of her work ever since, and are an integral part of this show as well. Conrad often uses linen and canvas to represent outside forces and structural features in her art. Painted or dyed in shades of weathered gray, barn red or earthy brown, then carefully sewn, washed, frayed and reworked again, the fabric is manipulated to represent the elements so familiar in the New England landscape, worn clapboard, for example or the muted sky on an overcast day.
In “Muddy Waters,” for example, Conrad offers a sewn linen construction that resembles the faded siding of a battered and weathered house. A horizontal box atop the piece contains two small constructed houses that appear to be swirling in a sea of dark cloth. Conrad explains that the piece came to her in the aftermath of the BP oil spill when the news was full of dire predictions about fish kills, soiled shores, ruined livelihoods and sick birds. The work reflects the feeling of home and hearth, but with a menacing edge of turbulence on the horizon or at the door. In unsettled times, the work seems to encourage the notion of seeking shelter to protect against the changes — reaching back to our collective memories to find the place where we are — or at least once were — well grounded.
In “Transcendentalists’ Cabinet,” a diorama-like construction, Conrad offers a series of small sculptural elements to consider. Canvas scraps represent books that are bundled in a grid system, a house sits precariously askew on a ledge, a sphere occupies an isolated corner and a simple bust of a featureless figure silently contemplates the scene.
“These are all symbols of what I’ve worked with in the past — wood, clay, plaster canvas and paper,” says Conrad. “The icons are the house and the bust. Then there’s the abstract forms of the rectangle, the square and the ball.”
“I think of the bound papers as tomes or writings such as ‘Civil Disobedience’ and ‘Self Reliance,’ major works of the Transcendentalists and works we all had to study at some point in our schooling,” explains Conrad. “But it is always fascinating to me why we select what we select. There are more layers and meanings and curiosity keeps us digging.”
Though her work often speaks to a larger unsettled condition in the world, in recent years, Conrad has found her own grounding in life through the practice of mediation, which has had a centering effect on her. While viewers might note that Conrad’s miniature houses are also featureless – lacking any obvious entry or exit points — she does offer a window into her world with two abstracts works in the show. “Coming to Square” and “Topiary Retina,” folded linen constructs with a somewhat Eastern feel to them both feature a contrasting colored square in the center that functions as a view to a different reality.
“The house figures are a symbol or icon, that’s why there are no windows or doors,” explains Conrad. “But in the abstracts, there’s an escape route.”
The art of Sag Harbor’s Carolyn Conrad goes on view at Guild Hall (158 Main Street, East Hampton) in “Simplify, Simplify: Constructions & Photographs” a show opening this Saturday, December 4 with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m. Conrad was the winner of the 70th Annual Guild Hall Members Art Exhibition Part II. The show runs through January 16. On Saturday, December 11 at 3 p.m. Conrad will take part in a Gallery Talk with Guild Hall curator Christina Mossaides Strassfield. For more information, call 324-0806.
Top: Conrad in her Sag Harbor studio.
Center: Conrad's "Transcendentalists' Cabinet" (photo by Gary Mamay).
