Rose B. Simpson Creates Dream House, A Site Specific Installation at Fabric Workshop and Museum
Rose B. Simpson Creates Dream House, A Site Specific Installation at Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop and Museum
Made in Collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Immersive Installation Presents Simpson’s First-Ever Video Works, New Ceramic Work, Textile, and Sculpture
October 7, 2022—March 26, 2023
Press Preview: Thursday, October 6
Rose B.Simpson, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño.
Philadelphia, PA, September 19, 2022––The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to present a new site-specific, immersive installation entitled Dream House by New Mexico-based artist Rose. B Simpson. Simpson, who is best-known for her works in ceramics, was encouraged by the FWM Studio team to explore and experiment with other materials and mediums to create an introspective body of work.
“It’s been an honor working with Rose over the course of two years,” says Executive Director Christina Vassallo. “The structure of the FWM Studio team and our residency program offered her the opportunity to experiment with different processes, such as architectural installation and film, that offer new modes of expression to this celebrated artist’s practice.”
Dream House marks a shift in Simpson’s practice from figurative-based installations and objects to one rooted in personal experience and architecture with an implied figurative presence.
Inspired by Pueblo architecture, her ancestral landscape, and magical realism, Simpson explores the imprints and through-lines that connect and orient her life as an artist, an Indigenous person, and a mother. The multi-room installation constructed at FWM presents Simpson’s perspective on her own domestic narrative, kinship, subconscious, and desire through use of ceramic, textile, sculpture, and the artist’s first-ever works in video, all created in collaboration with the FWM studio team. Many of the ceramics on view were created by Simpson at Philadelphia’s The Clay Studio, a partner on this project. Dream House opens on October 7, 2022 and runs until March 26, 2023.
|
Rose B. Simpson, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño. |
Simpson’s connection with her multigenerational, matrilineal lineage of ceramicists resonate throughout the installation, developed as spaces reminiscent of the intimate adobe architecture found in Southwest New Mexico. Upon entering FWM’s eighth floor gallery, visitors’ shadows are projected onto the gallery wall, immediately welcoming and acknowledging one’s presence in the space as one enters the installation.
Partitioned into separated rooms that visitors navigate between and peer inside, each presents an aspect of home: safety and emotional comfort, the work of psychological and spiritual growth, as well as abundance and fullness. Built so that visitors can peer inside, the first room features a video work depicting a landscape conveying Simpson’s notions of safety and empowerment, while the space is filled with textiles created to express comfort, along with a tapestry of interwoven figurative ceramic pieces. A table and chairs designed by the artist fill the second room, representing familial influence and the dedication to her practice of self-reflection. Large ceramic masks suspended above the workspace reference a lineage and accountability to forebears and a sustained connection to them. The third room, presenting aspects of fullness, features artist-made clothing, pottery, and shelves. In each of these spaces, Simpson includes video footage capturing important locations and moments of personal resonance.
In the fourth and final space, representing “the present” and located in front of the gallery’s monumental window, Simpson offers a light-filled gathering space for visitors to enter, sit, rest, reflect, and contemplate their own relationship with home and nourishment. Various public programs will be hosted at this communal site throughout the run of the exhibition, offering visitors a deeper connection of self-awareness in relation to place and community.
Dream House is organized by Senior Project Coordinator Abby Lutz and Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs DJ Hellerman in collaboration with the artist, and was initiated by Karen Patterson, FWM’s former Director of Exhibitions.
About Rose B. Simpson
Rose B.Simpson (born 1983, lives and works with her young daughter in Santa Clara Pueblo, NM) is a mixed-media artist whose work explores the impact, both emotional and existential, of living in the postmodern and postcolonial world. Simpson has a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Art, an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She has had recent solo exhibitions at the Wheelwright Museum, Santa Fe, NM, the Nevada Art Museum, Reno, NV, and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, is featured in a current solo at the ICA Boston and has recently opened Counterculture, a public art installation at Field Farm, Williamstown, MA (2022). Museum collections include the Denver Art Museum, ICA Boston, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Nevada Art Museum, Pomona College Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, Princeton University Art Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, The Boston Globe, Art in America, Forbes, Vogue, and The New York Times. Simpson is represented by Jessica Silverman in San Francisco and Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.
About The Fabric Workshop and Museum
The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is an internationally acclaimed contemporary art museum devoted to the creation, presentation, and preservation of innovative works of art. Its mission—Collaborating with artists, revealing new possibilities—embodies a 45-year commitment to helping artists experiment
Public Events
Reception
Opening Celebration
Thursday, October 6
6:00–8:00 pm
Be among the first to experience Rose B. Simpson, the culmination of the artist’s residency. Light refreshments served
FREE | advance registration encouraged
Member-Exclusive
Who Makes the Art Here Anyway?
Saturday, October 15
3:00–4:00 pm
Want to meet FWM’s art makers? Interested in learning more about the people who oversee and translate the complex
FREE for FWM members plus two guests | registration required
Workshop
First Friday: Printing for Gifting
Friday, November 4
4:00–6:00 pm
When speaking about her work and her life, Artist-in-Residence Rose B. Simpson describes a room of fullness, a place from which she has so much to give. With ample materials for screenprinting, block printing, and sculpting available, we invite you to draw from your own fullness to create handmade gifts for your friends and family.
$20 Public | $15 FWM members | advance registration encouraged
Workshop
First Friday: Printing for Gifting
Friday, December 2
4:00–6:00 pm
Make yourself or someone you love a special handmade gift. Participants can choose to screenprint a scarf or bandana as a special item and create prints on paper that can be transformed into one-of-a kind artworks, cards or gift wrap! We’ll be using prepared imagery and monoprinting techniques.
$20 Public | $15 FWM members | advance registration encouraged
More programming to be confirmed soon. Check fabricworkshopandmuseum.org/
Support
Major Support for Rose B. Simpson: Dream House has been generously provided by The National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from Joy of Giving Something, Inc., Girlfriend Fund, Maja Paumgarten and John Parker, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Megan O’Reilly-Lewis, and Wayee Chu and Ethan Beard.
In-kind support has been provided by The Clay Studio.
Major support of FWM is provided by the Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Foundation. FWM receives state art 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 Agnes Gund and the Board of Directors and Members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.
###
Media Contacts
Ben Demars
Blue Medium, Inc.
Tel: +1-212-675-1800
ben@bluemedium.com
Philadelphia-based inquiries:
Justin Rubich
FWM Communications
Tel: 215-561-8888 x224
jrubich@