Joyelle West Photography
Both trained in paper-based processes (printmaking and drawing), Cicely Carew and Kate Holcomb Hale take the dexterity of their hands into large-scale sculptural and graphic installation that defies strict categorization. Both artists are intensely physical with their work, the mark of their hand apparent throughout their surfaces but also in the structures that uphold them. In other words, their mark making makes their compositions, and their gestures make their construction. "Is It Wednesday Yet?", the pair’s first presentation together, articulates this constant becoming (or un-coming) and betweenness (or preciseness). Throughout, the work installed at LaiSun Keane Gallery dances between dimensions, scale, color, and material. Here, Carew and Holcomb Hale demonstrate a faculty with installation as a mode of being, becoming, and being between.
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
acrylic on yupo
108 x 60 inches
Starting with large sheets of yupo paper (an expendable surface that can be used for many processes, techniques, and materials) laid on Carew’s studio floor, Carew and Holcomb Hale convene with the surface and their gestures, coming in and out of making, balancing creation with day-to-day responsibilities of living and mothering (both have young sons). The results are a lyrical essay in brushwork and line all spelled out in washes of saturated color. This work is not meant to hold or say just one thing, however; installed in the gallery, this work incorporates the many worlds—aesthetic and otherwise–that coalesce in the pair’s individual works.
(pictured)
Wednesday March 8, 2023
acrylic on yupo
84 x 60 inches, 2023
Is is Wednesday Yet?
LaiSun Keane Gallery, Boston MA
Dan Watkins Photography
Cicely Carew X Kate Holcomb Hale
Wednesday February 9, 2022 #1
acrylic on yupo
44 x 30.5 in
Cicely Carew X Kate Holcomb Hale
Wednesday February 9, 2022 #3
acrylic on yupo
44 x 30.5 in
Cicely Carew X Kate Holcomb Hale
Wednesday February 9, 2022 #2
acrylic on yupo
44 x 30.5 in
Cicely Carew X Kate Holcomb Hale
Wednesday February 9, 2022 #4
acrylic on yupo
44 x 30.5 in
The gallery will be a container or structure for the work to become or unbecome, to be in process and commune with its audience, to take up space across the walls and floors. Both Carew and Holcomb Hale see the act of taking up space as Feminist. “Feminine in the energetic sense of the word, in that it is creating, changing, and birthing a new vision into existence,” says Carew, her active language here apt to the betweenness and becoming of “Is It Wednesday Yet?”. Together, Carew and Holcomb Hale are in a constant state of constructing and making space, embracing the push-pull and between of their lives. For them, it’s always Wednesday.
*excerpts from the essay Being, Between, Becoming: Cicely Carew and Kate Holcomb Hale’s Constant Construction by Leah Triplett Harrington, writer, curator Now + There, and editor-at-large Boston Art Review
(pictured)
Wednesday February 23,2022
acrylic on yupo
108 x 60 in
Joyelle West Photography
