ARTIST STATEMENT:
Environmental Advocacy
I will inhale smoke and exhale butterflies
Statement:
“I will inhale smoke and exhale butterflies”
This quote, gleaned from a dream, encapsulates my impulse to provoke the capitalist detritus of this world and cultivate it into a gravitational ecopedagogy.
An interdisciplinary artist, I probe the unrealized potential of a material to be reborn both in its physical nature and by changing a witnesses’ perception of the now. Focusing on fiber and mixed media constructions and installations that bear the weight of environmental activism by incorporating a material-based subtext (the material’s backstory adds depth to its new incarnation). My materials include salvaged ghost gear (a hazardous form of marine debris that endangers the oceanic environment from the surface tension at the top of tumultuous waves to the darkest pressures on the sea floor), recycled and antique textiles and furs (both being grotesque and beautiful in their own ways), and found/collected/border-line-hoarded objects. These building blocks come together to create a parallel universe, perhaps this planet’s next era, or may serve as portals to either.
A smoothie of natural and social sciences create dialogue about how material can be both physical and conceptual, both before and after, here and there simultaneously, a Schrödinger’s cat. By appreciating the fleeting beauty of what is, it imparts one with the angst and ennui of a knowledge of its faulty adaptability in a roiling sea of change. Natural history’s attempt to teach through its museum of dioramas must approach anew with abstract tapestries and timelines, geologic and biologic replication, a physical manifestation of abstract concepts not yet known to the human species.
Born in New York in 1971, I now live and work in a studio located on a spit of sand on the coast of Massachusetts.
The artist would like to acknowledge that her studio is on the stolen ancestral land of the Monomoyick People. She tries to be a good steward of the land, letting nature reclaim the surroundings.
Stone’s interview with Helen Adams, Textile Curator:
Evolution, ecology and environmental activism are beautifully conveyed through American artist Gin Stone’s art. Critiquing “humanity’s approach to the degradation and disrespect of the natural world” she employs a range of found materials in her pieces that are rich in colour, texture and meaning.
Studio interview for the Provincetown Art Association and Museum
