CAIRNATOPIA
solo exhibition
Nan Curtis
curated by
Jess Nickel
Exhibition on view August 20 - October 22, 2022
Gallery hours: Thursday - Sunday,12PM-5PM
or by appointment, email hellosatorprojects@gmail.com
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 20th from 5PM - 7PM
1709 SE 3rd Ave, 97214
A cairn is a marker, a memorial, a constructed object — a memory arranged for a space and viewer. Historically, a cairn is a purposefully stacked pile of rocks, ranging in type from as few as three to mark a trail to as large as a hillside. They can be found in every culture across the globe, the simple and universal act of a person stacking, making a pile from the objects around them to make a mark, preserve a memory or send a message.
In CAIRNATOPIA, artist Nan Curtis presents a distinctive cache of found objects and constructed forms. This new body of work showcases various mediums, including; kiln-formed glass, construction flags, and springs from an old mattress. Intensely personal possessions, a handmade indigo-dyed and woven rug, diaries, childhood dolls, boxes of ashes from deceased pets, and the urn of the artist's father coalesce, carefully and precariously, arranged in piles, stacks – cairns. They denote place, purpose, memory, and admiration while being sportive and comical.
Materiality is at the forefront of Curtis’s work and continues to be a source of inspiration in these new sculptures. Curtis used her studio’s library to draw from, full of scrap metals and furniture, cloth, fabrics, stones, and tangible curiosities. Many of these items are things Curtis has accumulated over the years; transported and cared for between homes, studios, and back again. The playfulness in Curtis’s work hints at constructed worlds, the unknown, and the counterintuitive. An ongoing fascination occurs when working with a medium or belonging. In this collection of sculptures, she often used the material as a starting point for exploration. Following the lead of the material, the action of making seeking to perceive; markers and monuments, memorials and direction.
Curtis constructs a uniquely individualized series of works that are odes to reminiscence, relationships, and time. However, their meaning and importance are also characteristically cultural, communal, and universal. The indeterminate and fractal way heritage, existence, and recollection are altered and displaced over time are not only explored but exalted.
written by Ashley Gifford
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nan Curtis is an interdisciplinary artist working in various mixed media, sculpture, and installation. Curtis’s craft-based experience in welding and fabrication is at the forefront of her artistic practice. Assemblage, craft, and readymades coexist uniquely across the breadth of Curtis’s work. She utilizes mediums like glass, clay, textiles, fiber, wood, photography, and video to articulate the enigmatic, visceral themes relating to the day-to-day; relationships, memory, and motherhood/family are common motifs that imbue Curtis’s artistic practice. Humor, material, and environment are repeated concepts in her oeuvre. Her lighthearted approach to presenting profoundly personal and universally ubiquitous narratives of the human experience is mischievousness, yearning, poignant and earnest. She elevates and subverts the banal and quotidian, making it dialogical, intersubjective, and contemplative.
An interdisciplinary and multimedia artist and educator, Curtis received her Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor of Arts from the College of Wooster. She is the former Director and Curator of the Feldman Gallery at Pacific Northwest College of Art. In 2011, she was the recipient of the prestigious Bonnie Bronson Fellowship. She has exhibited nationally and her work is included in several private and public collections, notably; Portland Art Museum, Joan and John Shipley, Sarah Miller Meigs, and Reed College, and has been featured in ArtForum, ArtWeek, Portland Monthly, The Oregonian, and The Stranger.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Jess Nickel is an independent curator based in Portland, Oregon. She received BFA from the University of Oregon and began her career as an artist. In 2011 she was awarded a year-long artist residency with Engage Studios in Galway, Ireland. Here, she worked with a group organizing a series of pop-up exhibitions in vacant spaces throughout the city. Since then, she has worked for arts institutions such as the For-Site Foundation in San Francisco, and held directorship positions at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Upfor Gallery, Newspace and Converge 45 in Portland, OR.