EXPLORING THE INVISIBLE
Researched-based, commissioned project in collaboration with Shelburne Farms
Curated by Heather Ferrell, Curator and Director of Exhibitions BCA
February 21, 2020 - June 7, 2020
Exploring the Invisible features a room-size installation of nearly 2,000 ceramic tiles and 19 felted wool panels made by the artist. The minimalism of Varadi’s art and the rawness of her materials belies an intensively laborious process. Instilled with a meditative rhythm, she repeats the same gesture several thousand times as a tile is formed, or wool felted.
The felted raw wool paneling is made from Navajo Churro wool, sourced from Shelburne Farms and accompanied by a single-channel video, excerpts from conversations with Sam Dixon, Dairy Farm Manager, and Renee LaCoss, Herdsman.
The tiles were made, after months of research developing the clay body and wood ash glaze, from the clay found at Shelburne Farms and the glaze made from the historic, more than 200 years old, cottonwood trees, taken down at Shelburne Farms.
In 2019, Varadi visited Shelburne Farms as a BCA artist-in-residence where she interviewed staff and researched the site’s history and farming practices. Through a series of workshops, she led community members in creating handmade tiles as she engaged them in conversations on sustainability and cultural heritage. Interweaving notions of fine art and craft, labor, and heritage, Varadi connects us to the importance of tradition in an era of mass production and global economies.
Brigitta Varadi’s video is one of two video components featured in her room-size installation Exploring the Invisible. It captures the laborious practice of processing clay sourced locally from Shelburne Farms to transform it into hand-built tiles emulating historical tiles that were once mass-produced in the late 19th century.
