Marie Heilich

Webster University’s Cecille R. Hunt Gallery

September 16 - October 15, 2011

River Front Times Art Capsule by Jessica Baran

Neighbors Make Good Fences, 2011

Steel, concrete, poplar, plasticine, porcelain

Jillian Conrad is based in Houston, Texas where she is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Houston. She graduated with a MFA from Rhode Island School of Design (2004). Conrad has shown at Socrates Sculpture Park (Long Island City, New York), the Bronx Museum (Bronx, New York), the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield, Connecticut), and participated in the Glassell School of Art Core Residency program. Most recently she was in a group show at Smack Melon (Brooklyn, New York), had a solo exhibition at Art Palace (Houston, Texas) and participated in the Headlands residency program in Sausalito, California.

“The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant sees it.” -Gertrude Stein

The idiom, “to be on tenterhooks,” describes feelings of angst and apprehension toward the unknown and upcoming. Not the most uplifting sentiment to inaugurate the 2011 school year, but certainly one that is prevalent. Originally, the term dates back to the fourteenth century and was associated with turning sheared wool into cloth. After wool was weaved into cloth it still contained animal dirt and oil and had to be washed. In order to maintain the cloth’s desired shape, it was stretched onto a frame, or tenter, and held in place with tenterhooks. Conrad created this body of site-specific work while in residency at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California this past summer. Attempting to understand the space as perceived only through 2D images and a floor plan, she relied on the perimeter of the Hunt Gallery to define its three-dimensional space – just as the hooks define the relationship between the center and the edge, holding a uniform distance as it creates a perimeter. This detached process of making work from a distance for a specific space would also, understandably, cause apprehension, unease, and more appropriately, the feeling of being on tenterhooks.

Conrad’s past work has often played with the line between two-dimensional images and objects that are more sculptural. While the classical mediums of painting and sculpture have been frequently negotiated in recent art history, there is also the everyday phenomenon of simply closing your eyes, imagining an object or place and opening them to experience it in three dimensions. The imagined world versus the physical world grants us split- second jumps from 2D to 3D. In certain moments, On Tenterhooks explores the perimeters of absent objects while still suggesting the centrality and wholeness of an object present.

Conrad’s work is a refreshing reminder that complexity and beauty can come from basic forms and materials when used in a smart way. To view things exactly as they are should always be the starting point for understanding the philosophical world. In her words, “At the end of the day, if you can’t be honest about what’s in front of you, then the big picture is insignificant.” Little is gained in a text or an image if the language or visual language is so nebulous and toplofty that it actually becomes an obstacle in communication. However, once simplified, what’s at stake in the precision and arrangement becomes amplified. The smallest choices now make a greater impact, which is the reason why even Conrad’s most inconspicuous materials still pack a punch. She explains, “It’s hard for things to look haphazard, to create a lightness in physical gestures – maybe something balanced or just propped against. For those light things to carry heavy meaning is challenging but rewarding. Every now and then I think I want to make something really grand and weighty, make an assertive statement, maybe something with a lot of right angles, or heavy, or dark, and I’ll visualize it but when I start to do it I get bored. I just can’t do it. Then I go back to the materials I find more interesting.” Moving forward with this new body of work, Conrad has more often utilized fabric for both its surface and material qualities and for its ability to play both a two- and three-dimensional role.

Language often contributes to Conrad’s process and mirrors her acute relationship with materials. Straightforward words carefully crafted into poetry have informed both her work and playful titles. In particular, Gertrude Stein has been an influence. “She puts ordinary words together in smart ways,” says Conrad. “Like using a cinderblock in a piece, directness can be very formally satisfying – there’s nothing extra about it. Cinderblocks are very clear in what they are and utilitarian in that way. That approach to material is exciting to me when I find it in language as well. There’s no mystery inthese objects. They are never attempting to be anything more than they are. The ingredients remain themselves but come together and create a different kind of whole.”

Tenterhooks coax the organic nature of wool into a uniform, geometric shape just as Conrad’s work triggers the friction that occurs when the natural world butts up against the man made. “Right now I’m looking around,” Conrad explains during the phone interview, “and there are these little sticks in the ground with red plastic, like someone is marking something, but those sticks blend into the natural environment because I’m so used to seeing them. They have as much aesthetic integrity as this bush with yellow flowers next to them.” In Conradʼs work, natural materials juxtaposed with the synthetic might be an everyday visual occurrence, but when carefully observed, it can be, at times, profound.