FOREST–BODY–CHAIR

Year of
LANDSCAPE / DEMOCRACY / WELLNESS
2021 at Mildred's Lane in the age of Coronavirus Horror

FOREST–BODY–CHAIR
July 5 through 25, 2021

Gina Siepel and Sara Smith

Featuring Francis Cape / Hope Ginsburg / Laura Mays / Bernadine Mellis / Chris Nassise / Karinne Keithley Syers / Gavin Van Horn / Amy Yoes /
with Fellows
Julia O. Bianco (Abakanowicz Fellow) / Leila Gordon (Abakanowicz Fellow) / Forrest Hudes / Joe Lerro (RAIC) / Rumpelstiltskin Anne Morgan / Lotte Walworth / Rachael Schmoker (RAIC) / Ainsley Steeves (CSU) / Samiha Tasnim (Abakanowicz Fellow)

When a tree becomes a chair, it enters our lives as an intimate partner. The relational dynamics between the forest, the human body, and the wooden chair provide an entry point for exploring the mutuality and false duality of nature and culture. In the domestic environment, chairs are places of rest for the body, social facilitators, and symbolic cultural forms. Chairs as we know them can also be poorly designed for the human body, causing a variety of physical problems.

We will immerse ourselves in the forests of Mildred’s Lane; conducting somatic, ergonomic, and hands-on research to develop unique, experimental chair forms that actively consider the forest, the body, and the domestic sphere. Multi-modal investigations of the forest, human anatomy, and vernacular American furniture design in relation to concepts of enlivenment and sustainability will form the basis of our explorations in the landscape. 

Gina Siepel is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and woodworker. Her work explores cultural understandings of nature, gender, and American history, through the production of objects and collaborative experiments in public spaces. Gina has exhibited extensively in the northeastern US and has received funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Berkshire Taconic Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation and is currently an artist in residence at the Macleish Field Station at Smith College. Gina holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase, an MFA from the Maine College of Art, and teaches studio art at Mount Holyoke College. Gina lives in Greenfield, MA, with Sara Smith. www.ginasiepel.com

Sara Smith is a transdisciplinary choreographer and librarian who creates speculative documentary works exploring interconnection and the poetics and politics of embodied and archival research. She is a recent recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship award in Choreography and lives in Greenfield, MA, with Gina Siepel. sarasmithprojects.com