mh RESIDENCY #06
MARGARET COGSWELL
DECEMBER 11, 2019 - JANUARY 26, 2020
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MARGARET COGSWELL
DECEMBER 11, 2019 - JANUARY 26, 2020
OPEN STUDIO I SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1-6PM
RECEPTION I SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 6-8PM
mh RESIDENCY is a studio residency program of mh PROJECT which aims to support artists and curators developing new projects. The residency provides a workspace, offers opportunities to present work through open studios and events, and helps the residents expand their networks. mh RESIDENCY’s sixth artist-in-residence, December 11, 2019 – January 26, 2020 is an American artist, Margaret Cogswell, was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Japan where she lived until she was 13 years old. She currently lives and works in NY.
RECEPTION I SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 6-8PM
mh RESIDENCY is a studio residency program of mh PROJECT which aims to support artists and curators developing new projects. The residency provides a workspace, offers opportunities to present work through open studios and events, and helps the residents expand their networks. mh RESIDENCY’s sixth artist-in-residence, December 11, 2019 – January 26, 2020 is an American artist, Margaret Cogswell, was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Japan where she lived until she was 13 years old. She currently lives and works in NY.
Margaret Cogswell begins her residency experimenting with a mixed-media installation titled Views from a Puddle. This installation combines video and drawings along with text from a poem by artist/poet, JoAnne McFarland, selected in response to Cogswell’s videos. Cogswell’s videos were shot while in residence this past summer at Mountain Lake Biological Station in Virginia. In an effort to engage with the world that the biologists and botanists in residence were researching, Cogswell used a small GoPro camera to shoot footage in ponds, puddles and along mountain paths while hiking through the forests. These observations led to a realization of how our view of the world is impacted and determined by where we are standing — literally and figuratively.
About collaborating with artist Margaret Cogswell on Views from a Puddle, JoAnne McFarland writes: I see and hear in the prismatic syncopation of Margaret's videos a kind of code—if only we would listen, if only we had courage to act on the most urgent issue we face—climate change: raging fires, extreme drought, torrential rains. My poem, My Broken French, deals with rains of many kinds: longing, grief, resignation, and probes the psyche from different angles, just as Margaret offers views of the world from a puddle. The scroll that carries the opening stanzas of My Broken French, in French/English couplets soaked with passion, complements Margaret's delicately wrought earth–toned drawings. The remaining six stanzas are 'drops' on rectangular placards that hover above the ground–level video projections.
Margaret Cogswell is a mixed-media installation artist residing in New York and a recipient of numerous awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation and New York Foundation for the Arts. Since 2003, the main focus of Cogswell's work is an ongoing series of RIVER FUGUES projects that explore the increasingly politicized role of water. RIVER FUGUES is a series of individually unique site-specific installations which utilize the musical structure of a fugue to weave together sculpture, video, sound and drawing components into site-specific installations which explore the interdependency of people, industry and rivers in post-industrial cities. RIVER FUGUES projects have since been commissioned by museums and art centers for exhibitions nationally and internationally.
www.margaretcogswell.net
JoAnne McFarland is the Artistic Director of Artpoetica Project Space in Gowanus, Brooklyn that explores the intersection of words, visual art, performance, and installation. She is the former Exhibitions Director of A.I.R. Gallery. Her numerous solo and group exhibitions include: Mending, 440 Gallery Brooklyn, NY with artist Nancy Lunsford, Both Directions at Once at KALA Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, and The Black Artist as Activist at Brooklyn's Corridor Gallery. McFarland’s artwork is part of the public collections of the Library of Congress, the Columbus Museum of Art, and Dynegy Inc. among others. Her poetry books include: Said I Meant/Meant I Said, a collaboration with poet Paul Eprile, Identifying the Body, and 13 Ways of Looking at a Black Girl. In her work McFarland treats violence and creativity as diametrically opposed: each act of making thwarts violence’s aim to destroy.
https://www.joannemcfarland.com/
About collaborating with artist Margaret Cogswell on Views from a Puddle, JoAnne McFarland writes: I see and hear in the prismatic syncopation of Margaret's videos a kind of code—if only we would listen, if only we had courage to act on the most urgent issue we face—climate change: raging fires, extreme drought, torrential rains. My poem, My Broken French, deals with rains of many kinds: longing, grief, resignation, and probes the psyche from different angles, just as Margaret offers views of the world from a puddle. The scroll that carries the opening stanzas of My Broken French, in French/English couplets soaked with passion, complements Margaret's delicately wrought earth–toned drawings. The remaining six stanzas are 'drops' on rectangular placards that hover above the ground–level video projections.
Margaret Cogswell is a mixed-media installation artist residing in New York and a recipient of numerous awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation and New York Foundation for the Arts. Since 2003, the main focus of Cogswell's work is an ongoing series of RIVER FUGUES projects that explore the increasingly politicized role of water. RIVER FUGUES is a series of individually unique site-specific installations which utilize the musical structure of a fugue to weave together sculpture, video, sound and drawing components into site-specific installations which explore the interdependency of people, industry and rivers in post-industrial cities. RIVER FUGUES projects have since been commissioned by museums and art centers for exhibitions nationally and internationally.
www.margaretcogswell.net
JoAnne McFarland is the Artistic Director of Artpoetica Project Space in Gowanus, Brooklyn that explores the intersection of words, visual art, performance, and installation. She is the former Exhibitions Director of A.I.R. Gallery. Her numerous solo and group exhibitions include: Mending, 440 Gallery Brooklyn, NY with artist Nancy Lunsford, Both Directions at Once at KALA Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, and The Black Artist as Activist at Brooklyn's Corridor Gallery. McFarland’s artwork is part of the public collections of the Library of Congress, the Columbus Museum of Art, and Dynegy Inc. among others. Her poetry books include: Said I Meant/Meant I Said, a collaboration with poet Paul Eprile, Identifying the Body, and 13 Ways of Looking at a Black Girl. In her work McFarland treats violence and creativity as diametrically opposed: each act of making thwarts violence’s aim to destroy.
https://www.joannemcfarland.com/