Phase One Installation
Birth of Commodity
From Gin Stone’s Commodity
An allegorical art installation employing life-size animals created by the artist in a ‘diorama’ that explores the environmental consequences of patriarchal-driven capitalism through human evolution. The unfolding artwork advances its timeline with each consecutive install location it occupies, the results of which are an evolving narrative. In three acts, the installation creates an apt metaphor for the exploitation of living beings, the environment, and ultimately the planet.
The Hawthorne Barn was the setting for the initial installation through a residency with Twenty Summers, May 2023.
MAN, MATERIALS, AND OUR LASTING LEGACY IN THE SEA
2022
heritage museums and gardens
north atlantic right whale ribcage made from 6,000 feet of lobster rope, one of the leading causes of entanglement and death, installed at heritage museum and gardens, May 2022
CREATURE COMFORTS
2018
cambridge art association
Installation/Curation/Proposal by Gin Stone Presented by the Cambridge Art Association, October 2018
Creature Comforts:
Enter Another Environment: a landscape of contrasts, with creatures and beings spotlighted in their native realm. Some are adapted to wetlands, others to an environment unrecognizable to humans. In this hall, visitors will explore a hauntingly beautiful, otherworldly depiction of an ethereal, foreign place, and encounter its remarkable residents face-to-face. In addition to stage-like lighting, there will be a mood-conjuring insect soundtrack playing over speakers, with environmental debris on some floor areas (including twigs, straw and longline fishing gear).
The space of the Kathryn Schultz Gallery in Cambridge will be transformed into a life-size diorama which visitors to the exhibition will enter and move about in.
The artist’s will be contributing portals, beings, creatures, images of the environment and billowing representations of the world we will be creating.
Creature Comforts Public Program:
Artist’s Talk with custom sound and lighting installation.
Q&A with a minimum of two of the featured artists.
Specially staged lighting and sounds will create a mood and experience akin to the dioramas in the Hall of North American Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The artists will discuss the creatures and/or comforts featured in the exhibit, much like a guided tour by a museum docent.
Artists:
Daniel Zeese, Gin Stone, Gail Samuelson and Christine Kyle
Daniel:Comfort Environmental Aspects (including ceiling hangings from the toile series, fringes and binds)
Gin:Creatures (wall mounted, ceiling hung and installed) / Curator
Gail:Photographic Environment Representations (wall hung prints on paper from her Wetland series)
Christine:Beings and Portals (clay and mixed media beings and portals grouped in ‘colonies’)
Creature Comforts was in part made possible by a grant from the Berkshire Taconic Foundation’s A.R.T. Fund.
Special thanks to the Cambridge Art Association for the green-lighting the installation.