Sarah Bliss
Primary Medium: Sculpture
Other media: Installation, Film / Video, Performance, Paint
Mix 'n' Match Building
Email: bliss (at) sarahblissart (dot) com
Website: http://www.sarahblissart.com/
Artist Statement
"Journey from Longjiang" references the economic history of the Artspace building: a former furniture store. As furniture production is increasingly outsourced to Asia to profit from lower standards of labor protection and environmental regulation, US jobs are lost, and the environmental impact of transcontinental shipping is profound. My sculptures are made of packaging materials that protect furniture in transit. Routinely landfilled or burned, they create highly toxic gases. Video tracks the furniture's transoceanic journey.
By taking the most banal, lifeless, and overlooked matter, mechanically and repetitively produced, and reinvesting it with what the Chinese call "li" (underlying organic patterns that surprise and delight), I attempt to reconcile the abject and destructive nature of capitalist culture with the beauty that cannot be vanquished. I seek to make visible the unseen relationships, activities and resources that both support and undermine our everyday activities.
Other media: Installation, Film / Video, Performance, Paint
Mix 'n' Match Building
Email: bliss (at) sarahblissart (dot) com
Website: http://www.sarahblissart.com/
Artist Statement
"Journey from Longjiang" references the economic history of the Artspace building: a former furniture store. As furniture production is increasingly outsourced to Asia to profit from lower standards of labor protection and environmental regulation, US jobs are lost, and the environmental impact of transcontinental shipping is profound. My sculptures are made of packaging materials that protect furniture in transit. Routinely landfilled or burned, they create highly toxic gases. Video tracks the furniture's transoceanic journey.
By taking the most banal, lifeless, and overlooked matter, mechanically and repetitively produced, and reinvesting it with what the Chinese call "li" (underlying organic patterns that surprise and delight), I attempt to reconcile the abject and destructive nature of capitalist culture with the beauty that cannot be vanquished. I seek to make visible the unseen relationships, activities and resources that both support and undermine our everyday activities.
Selected Works
|  Journey from Longjiang - 2010 - Furniture shipping materials, bamboo, audio, video - Variable  210,000 GPD (Deepwater Horizon) - 2010 - Furniture shipping materials - 66" x 70" x 25"  210,000 GPD (Deepwater Horizon) - 2010 - Furniture shipping materials - 66" x 70" x 25"  Thanks to Incessant Rejuvenation (for Yang Ming) - 2010 - Furniture shipping materials - Variable  Thanks to Incessant Rejuvenation (for Yang Ming) - 2010 - Furniture shipping materials - Variable  Thanks to Incessant Rejuvenation (for Yang Ming) - 2010 - Furniture shipping materials - Variable  Journey from Longjiang (close-up) - 2010 - Furniture shipping materials, bamboo - Variable  Twenty One Pop Up - 2009 - Mixed media - 80" x 76" x 43"  Easy Snap Together Assembly - 2009 - Mixed media - 56" x 25" x 13.5"  Lasts 5 Times Longer - 2009 - Mixed media - 23" x 15" x 7.5" |
Artist Bio
Solo Exhibitions
2010 Artspace, New Haven, MA (upcoming)
2010 Delavan Gallery, Syracuse, NY (upcoming)
2009 Consumed. Wunderarts Gallery, Amherst, MA
2007 Closing the Gap: New Paintings by Sarah Bliss. A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton, MA
2006 Paintings by Sarah Bliss. Hitchcock Center. Amherst, MA
Group Exhibitions
2010 What Matters Most? Exit Art, New York, NY (upcoming)
2010 Tempo. Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH. (upcoming). Catalog.
2010 I-95 Triennial. University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, ME (upcoming)
2010 Here. APE Gallery, Northampton, MA (upcoming)
2010 Beauty's Burden. Schmidt Art Gallery, Wartburg College, Waverly, IA. Curated by David Gibson and Jennifer Junkermeier. (upcoming)
2009 Decadence and Decay: The Mansion Project. Paul Robeson Galleries, Rutgers Univ., Newark, NJ (catalog)
2009 Out-of-Towners. PCS 80, Holyoke, MA. Site-specific installation
2009 Color Matters. South Shore Art Center, Cohasset, MA. Juror: Jen Mergel, Associate Curator, ICA Boston
2009 Archetime. Tank Space for Performing and Visual Arts, New York, NY
2009 Aferro Benefit. Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ
2009 Art into Life/Life into Art. Pen and Brush Gallery, New York, NY
2009 Gentling the Bull. (Scenery for multimedia puppetry performance.) Maezumi Institute. Montague, MA
2008 Small. Wunderarts Gallery, Amherst, MA
2008 Fine Arts 2008. Mills Pond Gallery, St. James, NY. Juror: Tina Kukielski, Curator, Whitney Museum
2008 Aftermath. Target Gallery, Alexandria, VA
2008 Juxtapositions. Greenfield Community College, Greenfield, MA
2008 On Paper II. The Bushnell, Hartford, CT
2007 Red. Kathryn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge, MA. Juror: Jane Farver, Director, MIT List Visual Arts Center
2007 14th Annual Juried Show. Essex Art Center, Lawrence, MA. Juror: Carole Ann Meehan, Curator, ICA/Boston
2007 Works on Paper. Northampton Center for the Arts, Northampton, MA
Awards
2009 VSC Full fellowship supported by the Dedalus Foundation. Vermont Studio Center
Publications
Decadence and Decay: The Mansion Project; Rutgers University. Exhibition catalog, pp 42-43, 2009
International Drawing Annual 5. Manifest Gallery, Cincinnatti, OH. 2010
Scannel, Caroline. "The Misleading Pleasure of Consumption," Massachusetts Daily Collegian, April 9, 2009
Studio Visit Magazine, Spring 2009, Volume 6. Boston, MA. pp 14-15
Education
1994 Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA. M.Th.
1985 Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH. B.A.