Artists Quarantine With Their Art Collections

Companion exhibition catalog, paired with the art show: Artists Quarantine With Their Art Collections, Guest Curated by Stephen Maine, for the Martin Art Gallery, running from November 17 - February 6, 2022. Introduction by Paul M. Nicholson, with essay by Stephen Maine

A shepherd shears his sheep, spins the wool, weaves and dyes the yarn, and makes beautiful red cloak.

THE EXISTENTIAL DREAD OF MAKING (OR NOT MAKING) ART TAKES CENTER STAGE IN THIS TRENCHANT SATIRE OF MFA CULTURE Wendy is an aspiring contemporary artist whose adventures have taken her to galleries, art openings, and parties in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Toronto. In Wendy, Master of Art, Walter Scott’s sly wit and social commentary zero in on MFA culture as our hero decides to hunker down and complete a master of fine arts at the University of Hell in small-town Ontario. Finally Wendy has space to refine her artistic practice, but in this calm, all of her unresolved insecurities and fears explode at full volume—usually while hungover. What is the post-Jungian object as symbol? Will she ever understand her course reading—or herself? What if she’s just not smart enough? As she develops as an artist and a person, Wendy also finds herself in a teaching position, mentoring a perpetually sobbing grade-grubbing undergrad. Scott’s incisively funny take on art school pretensions isn’t the only focus. Wendy, Master of Art explores the politics of open relationships and polyamoury, performative activism, the precarity of a life in the arts, as well as the complexities of gender identity, sex work, drug use, and more. At its heart, this is a book about the give and take of community - about someone learning how to navigate empathy and boundaries, and to respect herself. It is deeply funny and endlessly relatable as it shows Wendy growing up from Millennial art party girl to successful artist, friend, teacher—and Master of Art.

Due to the necessity of having to spend the Coronavirus pandemic in self-isolation, the artist Max Siedentopf turned his own home upside down and captured the results with his camera. He piled cans into sculptural towers, stitched together haute-couture clothes, crafted monsters and traps, and invented crazy alternatives to toilet paper. But that wasn't all: he also published all of his actions on Instagram and invited followers around the world to copy his various mottos. This handy survival guide consists of different chapters that shed an ironic light upon the process of getting by at home alone, whether one has chosen to isolate or has been ordered to. From "invent a new meal," to "make a painting using toothbrush," to "balance all your beauty products," it's all there. The best pictures from the series, which now numbers more than one thousand photos, are collected here. An effective way to combat boredom whenever. ​MAX SIEDENTOPF (*1991 in Windhoek, Namibia)—artist, photographer, video director, freelance art director—was the creative director for the KesselsKramer agency from 2013 to 2020. He is the founder of the quarterly art magazine Ordinary.

"A fun-filled art activity book that will encourage kids to express themselves while teaching them about key artistic styles and a selection of pioneering artists from history"--

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Six summers to fall in love. One moment to fall apart. A weekend to get it right. They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of spending summers in cottage country, on the glittering lakeshore of her childhood, she stays in a stylish apartment in Toronto, keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart. Until Percy receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek—the man she never thought she’d have to live without. For six summers during their youth, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm nights working in his family’s restaurant, Percy and Sam had been inseparable. And when Percy returns to the lake, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until she can confront the decisions she made, they’ll never know whether their love is bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past. Told over the course of six years in the past and one weekend in the present, Every Summer After is a gorgeously romantic look at love and the people and choices that mark us forever.

This project was made during Lenka Clayton's artist's residency at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, under the title Unanswered Letter. It was originally shown at the museum as part of the 2017 exhibition Lenka Clayton : Object Temporarily Removed. The exhibition was supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding was provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Arcadia Foundation. Major support of FWM is provided by the Marion Boulton Kippy Stroud Foundation. FWM receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Additional support is provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Agnes Gund, and the Board of Directors and Members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum. --Provided by Publisher.