Lydia Diemer + Betsy Hunt + Lindsey Schmitt
We seek the memories of interiors and cloth artifacts. We are entranced by pattern, frill as well as utility, a woven thing, a practical garment, the soft relations of the decorative. We are reminded of our bodies and persistent quotidian needs. Cloth is a temporality. It speaks of fast and slow, industrial, digital, and handmade, past and future.
We are held by a mystery, a nearly forgotten home, the gauze curtains filtering light over a plush toy on an impossibly scratchy plaid couch, the graze of goldenrod synthetic carpet on bare feet. Or a longing for the pilled texture of a well-worn sweatshirt, resting on and enveloping a body, a repaired favorite emanating warmth, sweat, traces of detergent.
We collect, pile, wear, wash, question, reuse, discard, forget, and refuse to throw away. We are simultaneously overwhelmed and comforted by a near-presence. Something in abundance of what we can touch. Something shrinks, rips, becomes obsolete, a rag for dusting. We shop, pile, toss, lose, share, mend, scour, and replace.
Fuzzy Daydream features new work from artists Lydia Diemer, Betsy Hunt, and Lindsey Schmitt. What we wear interacts with the human and non-human contexts that surround us, forging modes of personal expression, controversy, mimicry, and social camouflage. Clothes frame moments when aspects of the private go public, challenging cultural norms, creating space for contemplation, or staking a claim to joy. The artists examine the intertwining of aesthetic and socio-political histories and futures, informed by the agency of outfits and fabrics, facets of concealment and disclosure, impulsive actions and the reflexivity of trends.
The exhibition is accompanied by a zine, Fuzzy, a site of inquiry and haptic stimulation. The zine highlights the process of each artist and their exchanges over many months on fabric and use-value, labor, the residue of domesticity, and gendered associations.
(Portraits courtesy Zach Moser)
GALLERY HOURS
Tuesday 6-8p
Thursday 10a-12p
Friday 3-6p
Saturday 12-3p
Sunday 2:30-4:30p
and by appointment: info@publicspaceone.com
EVENTS
A conversation with the artists of Fuzzy Daydream
Monday, January 3rd, 2022 6-8 p.m., via ZOOM
Register here
Closing Reception
Friday, January 21st, 2022, 5-7 p.m., @ PS1 North (229 N. Gilbert)
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Lydia Diemer, www.lydiadiemer.com
Lydia Diemer creates drawings, prints, and installations that explore the entanglement of humans and non-humans at the peripheries of built space. Proposing an attentiveness to what is overlooked and abandoned, she places detritus, organic matter, and facsimiles of quotidian forms into visual dialogue. Circuits of production and transformation, from raw material to façade to rubble, trail through her observations and vignettes of ecological networks and pliable memories of the future. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa. She has been an artist-in-residence at Anchor Graphics and the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College in Chicago as well as at the Bubbler@Madison Public Library in Madison, WI. Her work has been exhibited at EFA Project Space (New York, NY), The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, MN), Des Moines Art Center Downtown (Des Moines, IA), and the Bemis Underground, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE). She currently lives and works in Iowa City, IA.
Betsy Hunt, https://vimeo.com/user1993729
Betsy Hunt currently resides and makes art in Duluth, MN. She teaches Time-Based Arts in the Digital Art and Photography program at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Her current research is in video art, experimental animation, and performance art. She is specifically interested in exploring physicality in film through cutout animation, sound and image juxtaposition, and performative filmmaking. She has exhibited video and installation works at Soo Visual Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), Elephant Art Space (Los Angeles, CA), and at the Duluth Art Institute (Duluth, MN). She received her BFA from the University of Northern Iowa in 2005 and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.
Lindsey Schmitt www.lindseyschmitt.com
Lindsey Schmitt is a visual artist who makes paintings and drawings. Her artwork examines pausing and questioning the visuals that surround us, the flux of human identity, and the changing relationship between humans and the natural world. Hard-edge, colorful, and abstract are terms that have previously been used to describe her art. In 2016, she earned her MFA from the University of New Mexico. In 2012, she earned her BFA as well as a BA in Spanish with Honors. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally at group shows at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; A1LabArts Gallery, TN; and the Tamarind Institute, NM. She was awarded the Minnesota Central Arts Board Learning Grant in 2020.