Parts & Labor, and From the Vault
Dueling exhibitions featuring Mara Baldwin and works from the permanent collection.
Dowd Gallery opens this spring semester with the exhibition Parts & Labor, a collection of artworks by Mara Baldwin. Working in a multi-disciplinary, research-based studio practice, Mara develops work utilizing paper and textiles to create serial and narrative forms. Inspired by the female experience, past to present, highlights of her work depict intricate patterns elegantly drawn in ink, giving form to utopian dreams challenging the postulation of the perfect.
"I am an artist working with labor-intensive mark-making, textile manipulation, and sculpture to examine the roles of imagination and effort as shared, necessary tools of both the artist and the utopian. I make work about people without depicting them by scrambling found objects, textures, and highly rendered surfaces to create lonely interiors and blueprints of remnant or newly imagined worlds. I pay attention to the historically under-recognized depth of female experience: the ghostly trace of women’s past lives, the earnestness of present-day feminism/s and queerness, and the aspirational hopefulness (and often contradictory aims) of utopian liberation.
My work focuses on the impossible dream of utopia and asks if a perfect life can include feelings of failure, loneliness, and dissatisfaction. This includes meticulous drawings and attention given to fumble-stitched scouting patches, throwaway factory frame inserts, illustrations for Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 100-year-old lost novel Herland, and collective tombstones of the Shakers. My multi-disciplinary and research-based studio practice uses works on paper and textiles to create serial and narrative forms. While all utopias fail, I find solace and value in the queerness of utopian dreaming. Drawing serves as a perfectly imperfect medium for this pursuit, welcoming flaws, drafts, and deviation."
-Mara Baldwin 2024
In conjunction with the exhibition Parts & Labor, From the Vault (west gallery) showcases works of art from the SUNY Cortland Permanent collection. The art works selected by Allison DeDominick ( SUNY Cortland Art and Art History lecturer) are examples from masters including Joan Miro, Michael Heizer, and Le Corbusier among others. The 9 artworks included in this exhibition are examples of abstraction in contrast to Mara Baldwin’s meticulous and mesmerizing drawn works on paper. The permeant collection pieces are examples of artworks that are available for on-loan services for the campus of SUNY Cortland.
The exhibitions are on display in Dowd Gallery from February 3 - March 7, 2025.
Opening Reception: February 6th, 5pm Main Gallery
Artist Talk with Mara Baldwin: February 20, 5 pm Main Gallery
As the spring semester is gets started, be ready to check into Dowd Gallery on instagram and facebook to learn more about the artworks on display and the artists that create them during the timeline of the exhibitions.
