The Everson Museum of Art recently opened a new exhibition, Shelia Pepe: Hot Mess Formalism. For over twenty years, Pepe has constructed large-scale, ephemeral installations and sculptures out of domestic and industrial fibrous materials. Hot Mess Formalism, the first mid-career survey of Pepe's work, examines how the artist plays with feminist and craft traditions to counter patriarchal notions of recognized or accepted forms of art making. Pepe spent over a week in Syracuse working with Museum staff to install the exhibition, and recently took some time to answer five questions about her artwork.
Your larger fiber installations are never installed that same way twice. How have you made use of the Everson's unique architectural elements, designed by I.M. Pei?
My work, particularly the large fiber sculptures, always responds to the space it occupies. What you see at the Everson is a truly jubilant response to the architecture; the height of the ceilings and the expansive gallery spaces allowed the sculptures to spread and take on shapes I have never seen before. Put Me Down Gently, installed in the Sculpture Court, follows the curve of I.M. Pei's iconic poured-in-place concrete staircase. This work also responds to the paintings hung on the walls in the Sculpture Court. The drips of paint in Morris Louis's painting are mimicked with drips of the fiber material. My hanging arc shapes are reversed versions of the scoop forms in Ron Gorchov's painting/sculpture.
How would you define the difference between fine art and craft?
Craft is in everything; it describes our physical relationship with stuff. Every artist and designer has a relation to craft in some way, as it is the word that describes any maker's relationship to what they create. You can have an extremely exquisite object, made by a skilled craftsperson, and at the same time an object that appears as if it did not take any skill to make. Yet both objects require some degree of craft.
How do concepts of labor and work inform your work?
Coming from a first-generation Italian American family, work and labor have been constant values in my life. Work was an important family value, and part of our everyday experience. My family owned a deli, and everyone played their part in working at the business. My mother also spent my childhood teaching me about the labor and work of women. I learned to knit, crochet, cook, and sew by age nine, which were skills she believed I needed to be a successful women. All of these are laborious processes--the labor of women, and labor in the service industries are endless. Creating my work, particularly the large-scale sculptures, is labor-intensive. I do all of the tying, knotting, and crocheting of materials by hand, and this process has been just as important to me as the finished work.
What discussions do you hope your work generates?
My work addresses everything from feminist and queer themes to domestic crafts and women's work. I think there are also issues of class addressed. I hope to preserve a particular feminist culture and history that is not seen in the cannon, as well as an era of American Catholic and Italian culture that is hardly visible. As the artist, I do not control the meaning of my work, I only control where the work comes from. I don't believe anyone has the interpretation, not even me.
What does an average day of work look like for you?
It depends on what project I am working on. The studio tends to be very multi-faceted. I'm likely crocheting or knitting parts for a very large sculpture commission at the same time that I am working on multiple Votive Moderns in different degrees of finish. I might also be working on a small area of chain mail on another table. I go back and forth between tasks as my mind and body take me. If I get stuck in one area, I'll go to another. On the other hand, if I am drawing on paper, I do it for days on end. For a break, I'll go out with a pocket sketchbook: to the street, subway, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the summer, I'll sit in a park.
If I am drawing or focused on Votive Moderns in the studio, and on deadline for lots and lots of hand needlework, I bring work home after a day in the studio and turn on Netflix or PBS for some "TV time." Sometimes that is the only way I can get my head out of the process and work for long unbridled stretches. Ironically, I'm back to the domestic version of the process that informed all of the monumental work. Then, that piece of handwork is installed as part of a massive site-specific sculpture. I love the micro/macro shifts from working in the studio to being at an installation site. I love the shuttling between size, scale, material, and location, between types and degrees of narrative. That is what life is for all of us: lots of juggling.
Sheila Pepe: Hot Mess Formalism is on view at the Everson through May 13, 2018 and is organized by the Phoenix Art Museum and sponsored by the Maxine & Jonathan Marshall Endowment Fund. The Everson presentation is supported by The Coby Foundation, Ltd. and the David and Nancy Ridings Family Foundation.