MOTHERSHIP:EARTH Exhibition Essay
Melhop Gallery º7077 is super proud to announce a beautiful new essay about the Stewart Francis Easton Mothership:Earth exhibition by the wonderous Victoria Wagner!
Wagner's insights into the work will help you contextualize and navigate the thought processes and philosophy behind the creation of each object.
You can see more of the exhibition installation, video tour and artworks on the EXHIBITION PAGE!
Thank you so much Victoria!
Exhibition runs 7 June - 18 July
the holy mountain, 2021 quilt, cotton 59.06” x 79.53”
Reflection: Stewart Francis Easton, Mothership Earth at Melhop º7077 Gallery
“A work of art makes you alert to what you hadn’t noticed in ordinary things
so that the distinction narrows between what is ordinary and what is extraordinary”.
- Sister Corita Kent
Several years ago, a good friend and Los Angeles native, introduced me to the work of Sister Corita Kent (1918-1986). A Catholic nun, teacher and head of the art department at Sisters of the Immaculate Heart in LA, Kent’s dynamic and prolific collection of paintings, prints and drawings spoke volumes to the notion of everyday humanity through devotion and community responsibility. Her striking color combinations, innovative pop sensibility and straight-forward messages of peace influenced the sensibilities of generations of designers, artists and craftspersons, then and now. Kent came to mind upon entering and experiencing the dreamy world of wonder created by the artist, Stewart Francis Easton at Melhop Gallery.
To enter the incredibly charming oasis that is Melhop Gallery 7077, is in many ways akin to entering a place of worship; the stark whiteness of the sky-bound walls and open, airy spaces lend both to spaciousness and privacy, engagement and poetic contemplation. To compliment and punctuate the vibe of holy container was a transcendent collection of thoughtful, multi-media work from Easton.
Easton’s show, Mothership Earth, is a revelatory body of work made in 2021 that encompasses embroidery, quilting and collaged paper. Revelatory, describing something revealed that was hitherto unknown, is the only term that can be used unilaterally to describe this work. A set of circumstances brought on by limitation, isolation and restraint, birthing a resilient language. Using the hands to find relief for the idle mind. The conventions seeming related to the intricate handwork of folk and outsider artists crafted in praise of a higher state of being, Easton’s three interrelated collections have the hum of a cosmic choir traveling on a spaceship pondering the interconnectedness of all the heavens.
Partitioned into three distinct spaces, the work in this exhibition seems to speak definitively to the era from which we are emerging. As we transition from isolation, I see the three spaces and work therein, didactically addressing states of comfort, contemplation and communion within the psyche. The privacy, primacy and intimacy of rest conjured by the objective functionality of a quilt, in this context performing as an invitation to evolve our responses/resistance through rest and comfort, the text inviting us to consider allowing a greater good. The meditative repetition of embroidery, whose images seem to explore an inner dialogue sorting through effervescent and shadow notions within our shared and singular consciousnesses, remind us to pause and look. Coming to grips with some of the darker partitions in our subconscious experience and the practice of developing enough quietness to address them with intention and breath. And finally, through the collages, we find the re-engagement with the whole. The excitement and childlike wonder of rediscovering perfection in the natural world.
Easton’s trickery is in making it all appear minimal, effortless, naive and approachable. However, contained within the surfaces of deep blacks and dense colors in the embroidered drawings of Focused Awareness is the richness of thousands of measured thread pulls, thousands of breaths and hundreds of prayers. There are no fossils here, only steps forward on a path toward presence through focused devotion and practice. Within the room titled, Earth Music, the use of familiar construction papers harken to childhood, perhaps an era of vulnerability, discovery and play. The countless, even stitches and overstitches that bind the Deep Listening quilts serve as a backdrop to an embedded message that reminds us that, with quiet intention, a new era is on the collective horizon…an epoch seated in our own awareness and willingness to live a life imbued with trust. Even the hand-cut wall text serves as a reminder to focus on the near invisible context; the negative space. The letters whispering, “yes, please do see the forest through the trees”.
Stewart Easton’s work is an invitation; an invitation to say yes to growth, presence and mindfulness. I visited Melhop Gallery to see Stewart’s exhibition, Mothership Earth. I came away imbued with hope and trust. Indeed, we may be embarking on a changeable history in the making, passing through a tempered period toward greater awareness and culpability. A post-pandemic journey of the heart and mind and a new era on the mothership...and in this buoyant craft, Stewart is quietly spinning records, methodically stitching, finding presence in practice and reminding us to look unapologetically, see whole-heartedly and breathe deeply and fully. Sister Corita Kent, like a faint breeze that blows through the cabin, aligned through time-space in ethos and ethic, both gently reminding us that the ordinary has been waiting for us to come alive, to see that it has been extraordinary all along.
-Victoria Wagner
Victoria Wagner in her studio
VICTORIA WAGNER
SHORT BIO
Victoria Wagner, who migrated at eighteen from the Nevada desert to Northern California, contrasts nature and industry in her gem-like sculptures, which are hand-planed from fallen coastal trees and painted with oils. Wagner also addresses this dichotomy in her installations and paintings, which explore transitions of abstracted sound and light from her surroundings. Wagner's work is physically in tune with her local landscape-she harvests the wood rocks in and around her home of Occidental, CA. Her paintings are inspired by the sun, sound, and vibrational pull of the forest while also commenting on the loss of personal reflection and direct experience in the mechanical age as natural resources are diminished by collective inaction. Wagner creates a psychedelic experience that reflects the landscape of Northern California, but also announces its darker and less romantic side.
-Heather Marx, curator
Victoria’s paintings, sculptures and murals have been exhibited and collected internationally. Recently, her work has been featured at Sources Unlimited-Desio + Giorgetti Showroom, Mumbai, Berkeley Art Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA, Angela Meleca, Columbus, OH, Dose Projects, Brooklyn, NY, Sarah Shepard Gallery, Larkspur, CA, Art Works, Cedar City, UT, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA and Alfa Gallery, Miami, FL.
Victoria has taught, advised and coordinated in multiple programs at California College of the Arts since the Fall of 2001. She loves curricular conversation and development that fosters community and defeats hierarchies that favor outdated models of exchanging and learning. Her recent book of memoirist short stories, Boughs of Our Form, was published in 2015.
Victoria is represented by Maybaum Gallery in San Francisco, California.