Shards (Fermentation of a Whole New Earth)
85 hand formed and glazed ceramic with photographic litho transfers, 2014
Part of the three-artist vitrine project Data Mine curated by Noa Bronstein
September 12 - October 18, 2014
Colin Miner Lili Huston-Herterich Maggie Groat
Resting squarely in the interstices of science, tradition, mythology and nostalgia, the almanac is a particularly unique cultural artifact. As an annual reference for recording and predicting astronomical events (the rising and setting of the Sun, for instance), tides, weather, and other phenomena, or as a collection about a specific subject, this appendage offers a meditation on the cataloguing of time and object, and specific paradigms of accuracy. A kind of museum of the everyday, the populist document was not only meant to help farmers plan the planting of crops, as in the 18th century these ubiquitous monographs became compendia of folk literature and entertainment. In an era of sparse reading material, the farmer's almanacs of North America and elsewhere became instruments of rural and urban connectivity.
Taking the almanac as a point of departure artists Colin Miner, Maggie Groat and Lili Huston- Herterich's site-specific, vitrines installations consider almanac-related themes, visually tracing the dialectic possibilities of informational patterns, text as artifact and alternative research collections.
-Gallery 44, 2014
Full exhibition essay by Noa Bronstein here.