Lael Marshall
Lael Marshall
Workspace Program Resident 2013
During my residency at Dieu Donné, I was mostly exploring the properties of the fiber abaca. I worked with it to make both sculptural pieces and flat works, and made many exciting discoveries in both dimensions.
I immensely enjoyed the physicality and direct handling of the wet material. As someone with no paper making experience, it was like trying to solve a puzzle, developing new strategies to manipulate and shape the fibers into ways that suited my aesthetic and temperament. My work has always been driven by a strong interest in my source materials. Fabrics have played a large role in my practice over the past 7 years or so. I have been using fabric as a base to paint upon, and exploring its qualities as it stretches over 3-dimensional forms.
At Dieu Donné, I was very surprised and excited to find that I could use paper much like fabric in 3-dimensional works, and ways to use paper on top of fabric that mimicked applied paint. For example, in the case of the sculptural works, I found I could cut darts into a sheet of wet, pressed abaca and carefully wrap it over wooden armatures. The places where the abaca over-lapped would adhere to one another, and with gentle pressing, nearly melt into one another. The paper tightened as it dried and found it’s final shape like a smooth tent spanning over hollows of the wood. The translucency and the strength of this fiber was astonishing! Abaca was everything I hoped it would be.
In the case of the flat works, I discovered a method of shaping pressed, wet abaca by sandwiching it between two sheets of tracing paper, and cutting it with a rotary blade. This technique allowed me to create precise shapes that I could easily handle and place with accuracy, on top of differently pigmented abaca, and/or together with other materials on cotton base sheets. Once pressed, the result was a fused, singular entity, and the cut out abaca shapes retained all of the precision of their sharp edges.
What a wonderful place Dieu Donné is, that encourages experimentation, and offers support and enthusiasm to individuals bringing their own ideas to an ancient craft. During my time at Dieu Donné I was working with new materials and in ways I had never known existed, and I thank my wonderful collaborator, Amy Jacobs, as well as the rest of the staff at Dieu Donné for offering me this thrilling and rare opportunity! — Lael Marshall, 2014
In the Studio
About the Artist
Lael Marshall (b. 1968, Seattle Washington) received a BFA from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MFA as ‘Meisterschülerin‘ from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany. Recent solo exhibitions include Gray Contemporary (TX), and 57W57ARTS (NYC) and 2-person or group exhibitions here and abroad include Dieu Donné (NYC), BRIC (Brooklyn), Sculpture Space NYC, ParisCONCRET (Paris), SNO (Sydney), Beers Contemporary (London), A/B/Contemporary (Zurich), A3 Gallery (Moscow), and mitart Gallery, (Basel), among many others. She currently lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens, NY.
For more information, please visit their website: https://laelmarshall.com