Monday, December 14, 2015

Sonya Wohletz receives Fulbright-Hays award

Sonya Wohletz, a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American Studies and Art History at Tulane University, is a 2015-16 recipient of the Fulbright-Hays award to perform dissertation research in Quito, Ecuador.

Sonya received her undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon where she studied Spanish and art history. Having grown up in Northern New Mexico, Sonya was always fascinated by colonial art and architecture and was furthermore inspired to pursue research on the subject after living in Argentina and Chile during her undergraduate studies.

A student of Dr. Elizabeth Boone, Sonya's research centers on seventeenth-century devotional art from the city of Quito in modern-day Ecuador. Her dissertation, entitled "Lilies and Ash: Crisis and Artistic Production in Late Seventeenth-Century Quito," explores how miraculous images functioned during times of upheaval, drought, plague, and economic decline in the Andes. 

Her research in Quito will consist of extensive archival work in the city's various repositories. She will also analyze myriad paintings and sculptures housed within the city's historic convents, churches, and houses.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

"Paper-thin" curated by AnnieLaurie Erickson opens at Antenna on Saturday

Professor AnnieLaurie Erickson curated the exhibition Paper-thin at the Antenna Gallery, featuring work by artists Aimée Beaubien, Jessica Labatte, Jason Lazarus, Srjdan Loncar, Curtis Mann and Aspen Mays. The exhibition opens Saturday, December 12th with a  gallery talk at 6pm and opening reception until 10pm. The show will be on view from December 12th, 2015 – January 3rd, 2016.

Paper-thin features artists exploring alternative uses of familiar photographic materials. Many of the pieces dwell in the dimensional translation inherent to the photographic process, and speak to their own condition as photographic works. Each artist has maintained a desire for visual pleasure, while probing the medium to disorienting yet transformative ends.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Adam Mysock: Artist Perspective at NOMA December 18


On Friday December 18th Adam Mysock, Senior Professor of Practice in Studio Art, will present a lecture titled "On Seeing and Being: Appropriation and Identity Narratives" at the New Orleans Museum of Art as part of the museum’s Artists Perspectives series and in conjunction with the Visions of US exhibition currently on display.

In November Mysock had paintings included in two group exhibitions- two works presented as part of the Travelers in Time exhibition at Site 109 in New York City and two works in the Annual Miniature Exhibition at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts.  In December, Mysock will also have several of his paintings on exhibition in Miami – at the ART MIAMI Contemporary Art Fair with the London-based Cynthia Corbett Gallery and at the Deauville Beach Resort presented by the MIAMI PROJECT Contemporary Art Fair and Jonathan Ferrara Gallery.  

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Studio Art classes: Spring 2016

The Newcomb Art Department offers a variety of studio art classes in Ceramics, Digital Arts, Glass, Painting, Photography, Printmaking and Sculpture. Below is a selection of classes offered in Spring 2016. For a complete listing, please see: classschedule.tulane.edu.

ARST 2170, 2180 Intermediate Glass (3, 3)Prof. Koss. Prerequisite: ARST 1170. The goal of this class is to achieve a functional understanding of glass art. This general course focuses on blowing, casting, and forming glass. Attention is given to using the approaches to glass for individual expression.


ARST 3020-01 Photographic Archives (3)

Prof. Erickson. This course provides a laboratory to develop student artwork through critical thinking and research. Specifically, the course sets out to equip students with the necessary tools and understanding to carry out independent or collaborative research in relation to their art making. By developing partnerships with community organizations that have a need for visual representations related to their cause, we will work to fulfill their needs while simultaneously producing artwork that is meaningful to the student’s artistic practice, as well as socially relevant. All students are required to engage in 20 hours of community service and community service is an integral component of the course. Prerequisite: any 1000 level course in studio art (ARST).

ARST-3020-03 Contemporary Sculptural Practices: Extreme Fibers (3)

Prof. Hermant. This course is designed to introduce students to a range of materials, processes and histories that make up the field of fiber sculpture, or, "soft" sculpture. Students will investigate ways in which fibers can produce meaning through placement in, or in response to, a variety of public spaces and current events. The use of unconventional, flexible, and fibrous materials and alternative methodologies to create three-dimensional art will be covered.Students will become familiar with fiber media and be able to implement a range of processes to create sculptural work.  Readings, demonstrations, presentations, exercises, and excursions will inform individual and collaborative projects.

ARST 3550 Time-Based Media (3)

Prof. Jones. Prerequisite: ARST 1550. This is a class with an emphasis on digital video, animation and image sequencing. Students will be expected to create time-based projects that combine visual and temporal elements in creative, critical and innovative ways.

ARST 3650 (3), ARST 3890 (1) Mural Painting (4)

Prof. Mysock. Mural Painting and Drawing (a Service Learning course) explores the role of public art in the (re)development of New Orleans communities by combining the practical, perceptual, and technical challenges of large-scale drawing and painting with regular service activity.  Tulane artists enrolled in the course spend nearly five months off-campus engaging with a community partner, acquiring the habits necessary to establish meaningful civic and creative relationships.  Students also investigate artistic creation within a collaborative environment and build a comprehensive manual that documents the logistics of large-scale public art projects. Most importantly, the Mural Painting and Drawing course teaches young artists how they can participate in the renewal and preservation of the collective bonds that define a community.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Emily Floyd awarded John Carter Brown Fellowship

Emily Floyd, PhD candidate in Art History/Latin American Studies, was awarded a four month John Carter Brown Library Associates Fellowship. 

Emily is currently at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University conducting research for her dissertation, “Matrices of Devotion: Lima's Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Devotional Prints and Local Religion in the Viceroyalty of Peru.”

Newcomb Art Department Holiday Sale

photo by William DePauw 
Newcomb Art Department Holiday Sale

* Open to the Public
Friday and Saturday
December 4 and 5, 10 am - 4 pm
Carroll Gallery, Woldenberg Art Center

* Private Newcomb Art Museum 
Members Preview: Thursday, December 3, 6 - 8 pm. Join the Newcomb Art Museum that night and enjoy early shopping and a special reception.

To check the status of your membership, please call 504.314.2406 or email tpfarris@tulane.edu.

Monday, November 16, 2015

This week @NewcombArt

 Nicolas Ticot, artist talk | Wednesday, November 18, 9am | 204 Woldenberg Art Center

Copyright Criminals (2010)WHAT IS A COPY? a film series | Wednesday, November 18, 4pm | 209 Woldenberg Art Center

Jeremy Jones, MFA artist lecture | Wednesday, November 18, 6pm | Freeman Auditorium

TH Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, announcement of awards and walkthrough with juror Dr. Katie Pfohl, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, New Orleans Museum of Art | Thursday, November 19, 3:00pm | Carroll Gallery

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

This week @NewcombArt

Doreen Garner, The Observatory, 2014
Ceramics Talks, Jeffrey Thurston / Michelle Swafford, MFA artist lecture | Wednesday, November 11, 6pm | Freeman Auditorium

TH An Inter-American Standoff: Marisol, MoMA and the Cold WarArt History Works in Progress & the Stone Center for Latin American Studies lecture by Delia Solomons | Thursday, November 12, 6pm | 209 Woldenberg Art Center

Visiting Artist Doreen Garner | Friday, November 13, 5:30pm BBQ, 6:00pm lecture, 7:00pm performance | Pace-Willson Glass Studio, Woldenberg Art Center | sponsored by the Sandra Garrard Memorial Fund for Recent Trends in Contemporary Art

Monday, November 9, 2015

AnnieLaurie Erickson: Surveillance Blind at the Goethe-Institut

AnnieLaurie Erickson, Hardware Mirror #10 (Dial-Up)
The Goethe-Institut's current exhibition Surveillance Blind focuses on the demarcation of  privacy and surveillance. The exhibition opening on September 17 included a panel discussion with artists AnnieLaurie Erickson, John Vigg, Simon Menner, and Nate Larson. The exhibition will be on view through December 3, 2015.

Erickson, Assistant Professor of Photography at Tulane University, photographs server farms and other physical infrastructure that make the cloud possible.

Erickson's work is also featured in the exhibition Lorem Ipsum at the Pollock Gallery at SMU Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas. The exhibition opened November 7 and runs through December 12, 2015. An ongoing series of curatorial changes to this exhibition are posted regularly at loremipsumexhibition.tumblr.com

Thursday, November 5, 2015

New Art History courses: Spring 2016


The Newcomb Art Department announces several new Art History courses available to undergraduate and graduate students in the Spring of 2016. Registration is open at classschedule.tulane.edu


Prof. Schweizer. This class will survey the artistic production of China, Korea, and Japan across a wide scope of historical periods and media. Objects and ensembles such as ink paintings, tombs, temples, ritual implements, sculptures, porcelain, and lacquer objects will be approached discussing their styles, functions, and audiences.

ARHS 3910 Leonardo's World (3)
Prof. Geddes. This course uses Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings, drawings, and writings to explore attitudes about the interrelation of art and nature in the Renaissance. The first half of the course considers ways of seeing and picturing the natural world, while the second investigates how individuals of this time responded to their environments, including practical and aesthetic uses.

Prof. Solomons. Designed to bring Tulane’s art historians and artists together, Medium Matters will intensively examine artistic materials from oil paint and mirrors to dirt and light bulbs. Each class explores how contemporary artists around the globe employ a particular medium for distinct conceptual, aesthetic, and political purposes.

Prof. Schweizer. This seminar investigates artistic exchange and the construction of self and other during a number of critical moments in the histories of China, Japan, and Euro-America. Major foci will be the presence of Europeans in East Asia during the 16th and 17th centuries; the period of Japan’s national isolation; the Japonisme movement; the search for a national style in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; Modernism; the Postwar period; and changing notions of “Asianness” in the globalized world.

ARHS 6812 Leonardo da Vinci (3)
Prof. Geddes. Accompanying the survey course, Leonardo's World, this seminar engages in close examination of the master's oeuvre to better understand the wide array of subjects that interested him intellectually and practically. Themes include his theory of art, the many uses of drawing and writing, scientific experimentation, and the complex social networks and intellectual history that informed his production

Prof. Solomons. This seminar explores a wide variety of modern and contemporary art of Latin America, including Conceptualism, Neoconcretism, Pop, Performance, and Installation Art. Particular attention will be paid to globalization, travel, dictatorships, Cold War politics, and U.S.-Latin American relations as revealed through exhibitions, texts, and artworks.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Art History Writing Workshop

Writing workshops for undergraduates in Art History classes
will be held on 10.26 at 4:30pm and 10.29 at 5pm.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Call for entries: Undergraduate Juried Exhibition


The 2015 Undergraduate Juried Exhibition will be held November 4-24 in the Carroll Gallery with an opening reception on Thursday November 5, 2015.

This year's juror is Dr. Katie Pfohl, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, New Orleans Museum of Art.


The exhibition is open to all Tulane undergraduate students. Works in all media are encouraged. A maximum of five pieces may be submitted for review. Submission date is Thursday, October 29, from 9am - 3pm in the Carroll Gallery.


Questions? Contact Laura Richens, Curator of the Carroll Gallery | lrichens@tulane.edu | 504.314.2228

Monday, October 19, 2015

Visiting Artist: Rachel Rader

Visiting artist Rachel Rader will present a lecture and demonstration
Monday, October 19 at 4:30pm in the Pace-Willson Glass Studio.




Wednesday, October 14, 2015

New faculty: Anthony Baab, Professor of Practice, Painting

The Newcomb Art Department welcomes Anthony Baab to the faculty as Professor of Practice in Painting and Drawing.

Anthony Baab studied Painting and Printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute (’04) before obtaining an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Cornell University (‘09). Representing a wide range of media, his recent work consists of drawings, sculptures, and large-scale models that explore notions of self-reflexivity. His work has been exhibited at Grand Arts (Kansas City), Dan Graham (Los Angeles), The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), and Three Walls (Chicago) and has been included in several permanent collections including: The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum and The Microsoft Collection. Recently Baab was a 2014-15 Fine Arts Work Center Provincetown Fellow and resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Drawing (’15). His work is represented by Haw Contemporary in Kansas City.

Taking risks in sculpture

Emily Hermant, who joined the faculty this semester as an assistant professor of sculpture, seeks to inspire students in the Sculpture Foundry in the Woldenberg Art Center on the Tulane University uptown campus. New digital art tools were a gift from New Orleans resident Louis Jung, in honor of his mother, Harriett Tolar Jung, a 1940 Newcomb College graduate who majored in painting.

read more... Tulane New Wave 10.09.15
(Photo by Ryan Rivet)

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

MORE MEDIA opening at the Carroll Gallery

The Carroll Gallery presents:
More Media:  
performative / interactive
Kyle BRAVO
Amanda CASSINGHAM-BARDWELL
Lee DEIGAARD
Susan GISLESON
Kevin H. JONES
Jenny LeBLANC
Srdjan LONCAR
Natalie McLAURIN
Karoline SCHLEH
John SEEFELDT


exhibition dates:  October 6 – 28, 2015
reception:  Wednesday, October 7, 5:30 – 7:30 pm

Carroll Gallery hours:  M – F, 9 am – 4 pm. Gallery closed on official Tulane holidays.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Visiting Artist Jim Gaylord meets with Abstraction class

On Tuesday September 29 visiting artist Jim Gaylord of Brooklyn met with Aaron Collier's Intermediate Painting (Abstraction) class which has 18 undergraduates. The students had recently completed a Geometric Abstraction assignment which they reviewed together.  It was a real hit: students were really thankful, and were sharpened by the experience.  Gaylord also offered a public lecture in Stone Auditorium Tuesday night.  His visit with us was generously supported by CELT, the Sandra Garrard Memorial Fund, and the Newcomb Art Department.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Emily Hermant exhibition in Chicago

On Saturday October 3, the two-person exhibition Hermant/Butler opens at the Franklin in Chicago, featuring the work of Assistant Professor of Sculpture Emily Hermant and Ben Butler.

In Emily Hermant’s work, a recurring theme is the utilization of slow, hand-making processes to generate ways of representing the rapid movement and proliferation of digital information and communication in contemporary life. For this duo exhibition with Ben Butler at The Franklin, Hermant has created Walled Garden, an installation of hand-rendered wallpaper panels on the interior of the Franklin’s outdoor structure, in which orchestrated ensembles of individually drawn dashes fluctuate in vibrant, toxic color combinations—a distillation of our experience of the hum and blur of rapidly changing technological information.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Artist Lecture: Jim Gaylord

Please join the Newcomb Art Department for a lecture by artist Jim Gaylord on Tuesday, September 29 at 6:30pm in Stone Auditorium, 210 Woldenberg Art Center.

This event is co-sponsored by the Newcomb Art Department,  the Center for Enganged Learning and Technology, The Sandra Gerrard Memorial Fund, and the Perry K. Simmons Endowment.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

New faculty: Delia Solomons, Visiting Assistant Professor

The Newcomb Art Department welcomes Delia Solomons to the faculty as Visiting Assistant Professor of  Modern and Contemporary Global Art.

Prof. Solomons specializes in twentieth-century art of the Americas and Europe. Her research examines intersections of globalization, exhibition practices, visual culture, and politics. Her current project explores the sudden surge in exhibitions of Latin American art across the United States in the 1960s, the years directly following the Cuban Revolution; the project reveals how, as cold-war tensions escalated in the Americas, museums offered privileged spaces to stage both cultural diplomacy and dissent. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the Humanities Initiative at New York University, the Institute of Fine Arts, and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art.

Solomons received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts in 2015. Prior to coming to Tulane, she taught at New York University and the City University of New York. She also co-curated the exhibition Sari Dienes at The Drawing Center in 2014 and has worked on curatorial projects for the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Grey Art Gallery.

Solomons offers new courses to Tulane undergraduate and graduate students including Global Catalysts: Artists Respond to Disaster, Revolution, and Liberation , Art and Issues in Latin America After 1945, and Medium Matters in Contemporary Art: Dirt, Paint, Mirrors, and Lights

Monday, September 21, 2015

CAC's REVERB: Past, Present and Future

Levee Break Sculpture by Gene Koss, the Maxine and Ford Graham Chair in Fine Arts, is on view at REVERB: Past, Preset, Future, a juried group exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans. The exhibition explores the evolution of art and artistic practices in New Orleans and its surrounding region over the last decade since Katrina and will be on display August 1 to November 1, 2015. The show also includes works by faculty Aaron Collier and Adam Mysock, as well as alumnae Anita Cooke, Loren Schwerd, and Sidonie Villere.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

New faculty: Leslie Geddes, Visiting Assistant Professor, Art History

The Newcomb Art Department welcomes Leslie Geddes to the faculty as Visiting Assistant Professor. Leslie Geddes specializes in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture. She received her Ph.D. in the history of art from Princeton University in 2014. Her research has been supported by a grant from the Kluge Foundation, a Donald and Mary Hyde Fellowship, and a Readership in Renaissance Studies at Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti in Florence.


Prof. Geddes’s research focuses on how early modern architects and engineers studied and depicted the natural landscape, specifically attending to the use of drawing in the production of knowledge. Her first book project, Watermarks: Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance Mastery of Nature, analyzes the subject of water in art in conjunction with the practical undertakings of hydraulic engineering. She has recently published two articles, one on Leonardo’s geological studies and another on his drawings of mobile bridges, an ancient military technology. She is also writing an article on Renaissance descriptions of experiments that agitate natural phenomena, such as boiling water or lighting fires.

Prior to coming to Tulane, she was a curatorial research assistant at the Morgan Library & Museum and a bibliographer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Unusual inspirations make fascinating art

Discarded folded paper road maps, recycled food cans and other “found” objects that evoke memories — these are the inspirations for five artists featured in the “Expanded Media” exhibition on view now through Sept. 24 at the Carroll Gallery on the Tulane University uptown campus.

When curator Laura Richens started planning the exhibit at the gallery, which is in the exhibition space of the Newcomb Art Department in the Woldenberg Art Center, she searched for “something visually exciting” and found it in the works by artists Anita CookeSadie SheldonNikki RosatoMark Grote and Rontherin Ratliff.

“I want to challenge our students and audience to think outside the parameters of traditional artistic media, and to see that there is a wide range of media that can be used in visual art,” Richens said. 

Carroll Gallery hours are 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. 

[Carol Schlueter, Tulane New Wave, September 14, 2015] 

Monday, August 24, 2015

New Faculty: Emily Hermant, Asisstant Professor, Sculpture

The Newcomb Art Department welcomes Emily Hermant to the faculty as Assistant Professor of Sculpture. Hermant is an interdisciplinary artist whose large-scale drawings, sculptures, and installations explore themes of communication, gender, labor, and the spatial experiences of the body. She received her BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada in 2004 and her MFA as a Trustee Merit Scholar in Studio Art/Fiber & Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Ace Art in Winnipeg (2015), CIRCA Art Actuel in Montréal (2014), the Evanston Art Center (2012), The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (2012); and group exhibitions at Galerie Nicolas Robert in Montréal (2014), Virginia Commonwealth University (2011), Hyde Park Art Center (2010), Triennale di Milano Museum in Italy (2009), and the Museum of Arts & Design in New York (2008). Her work has been featured in LVL3 Media, ArtSlant, Espace Sculpture, The Washington Post, and TimeOut Chicago. Hermant has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec as well as residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, Ox-Bow School of Art, The Ragdale Foundation, and the Nordic Artists’ Centre in Norway.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

NEW CLASS Constructing Nature: The History and Theory of Landscape


ARHS 6814:

Prof. Leslie A. Geddes
lgeddes1@tulane.edu
Mondays 3:00–5:15 pm 

Woldenberg Art Center
Room 209

The ways in which our society figures in its relation to the natural environment has never been so urgent. This seminar studies the history of that relation, through an examination of the significance and meaning of "landscape" in art, literature, architecture, and landscape design.

This course studies how conceptions of landscape, evident in both physical forms and poetic and artistic representations shaped the ideological and natural terrain of Europe from Antiquity to the 18th century, with particular emphasis on the period of 1450–1800.
Particular attention will be paid to the socio-cultural dimensions of the landscape, both natural and man-made, and the ways in which the shaping of the landscape and the natural environment has impacted humanity’s experience of the world. Class meetings will focus on a range of issues, including ownership, memory, political and economic power, the status of the landscape architect or painter, the dissemination of knowledge and technology, and symbolic meaning.

Class topics address architectural and landscape design projects as well as literary and artistic approaches. Readings will range from close examinations of specific sites (Versailles) and typologies (Italian Renaissance villas, English gardens) to landscape paintings and prints, to broader engagements with themes that cut across time.

Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates

Register here: http://classschedule.tulane.edu

Aaron Collier: "What Stands Behind"

Aaron Collier, Assistant Professor of Painting at the Newcomb Art Department, spent the month of June in residency in New York. He will be showing new work at the Staple Goods Gallery this month in an exhibit titled, "What Stands Behind."
Aaron's paintings in this exhibition, which overlaps with the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s passage through New Orleans and the Gulf South, aim to picture the interplay of order and disarray that accompany not only major upheavals but also those more modest in scale or frequent in cycle.
The exhibition opens Saturday, August 8 from 6-9 and continues Saturdays and Sundays, 12-5, through September 6.

Ronna Harris: "The Water Will Rise"

Professor Ronna Harris’ painting, “The Water Will Rise” is included in the 2015 Louisiana Contemporary exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Art. The exhibition opened August 1, White Linen Night, and will be on view until September 20, 2015.

Her work is also featured in a special issue of Art & Beyond,  Nude and Figurative Art: “The Body Beautiful” which may be viewed online.

This summer Prof. Harris also exhibited in “Strange Paradise,”  a national juried exhibition at the First Street Gallery in New York.

Prof. Harris states that her work is rooted in the American Realist tradition. "However, my paintings communicate a state of controlled chaos as I combine two divergent forces and approaches into my art: realism and abstract expression. By a proficient handling of light, a mastery of images, and a skillful mark-making method, my paintings confer an illusion of reality to something that's not real."

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Teresa Cole at Callan Contemporary

TERESA COLE 


CLOSING RECEPTION with the ARTIST 

THURSDAY JULY 23rd  6-8 pm 

EXHIBITION ON VIEW UNTIL July 26th, 2015 

Press Release 


Seamless Belonging


Language is the inherent but ultimately partial material of our lived experience. Every traveler knows this, but is reminded afresh when confronted with a dialect beyond her own understanding. In an absence of linguistic comprehension, one's remaining capacities of sensation and understanding are amplified: the traveler moves through foreign lands composed entirely of sight, sound, and scent in a physicality of knowing made manifest through an incapacity for words.

Seamless Belonging, an exhibition by New Orleans-based artist Teresa Cole, explores this phenomenon through installation projects as well as ongoing contributions to this internationally respected artist's growing body of work in handmade paper. Cole, a full professor of printmaking in the art department of Tulane University, has for several years made pattern a subject of her sustained visual scrutiny. Her investigations have lead her research around the globe: to South Africa, Belgium, India, and most recently Japan, where the artist explored traditional papermaking techniques at the Awagami Factory.

Seep, Cole's large-format installation piece, represents not only a culmination of this immersion in a traditional Japanese craft, but explores indigo dye as tool of mark-making and meaning: "My investigation of traditional handicrafts and the impeccable skill in which they are executed exposed me to a grammar of care, expertise, and perfection," Cole writes. "The repetition of an activity until it is second nature but never taken for granted, until it is expected yet novel each time: a meditation, a prayer and a practice all at once." Cole's description of her process could just as easily be applied to the adoption of a new language, a reality that lies at the core of her practice. The patterns, materials, techniques and methods that compose each of her works - in paper, in dye, in ink - function as a visual grammar for the artist, who endlessly recombines her materials to form the utterance of the outsider with the introspection of the solo traveler. "The very task of language," Barthes tells us, "is to give one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new."

These inflections are further developed in Cole's handmade paper pieces, which draw from her extensive catalogue of collected and manipulated patterns, a language the artist has consistently added to for years. Created at the Dieu Donné papermaking studio in New York City, each work combines pigmented cotton and abaca pulps to extract a unique image from a larger field, crafting an occasion for deep scrutiny and meditation on meaning. The intimacy, transparency and controlled elegance of these works contrasts sharply with the measured intensity of Seep, creating a range of emotional resonances not unlike those of a stranger in a strange land