Mandy Greer

Mater Matrix Mother and Medium

THE PROJECT:

Mater Matrix Mother and Medium is a process-based temporary public art installation by Seattle-based installation artist Mandy Greer. It combines community action, site-embedded installation and personal inquiry. A 300-foot fiber river of recycled yarns and fabrics, crocheted into the trees of a community, MMMM celebrates the splendor of our urban creeks and watersheds and the communities that protect them. It invites you to slow down and talk with your neighbors while you work with your hands.

Mandy spends time in the community teaching anyone willing to learn how to crochet, with some contributing a few minutes of chain stitch and others sticking around for a few hours. As the installation travels to different communities, it carries the previous communities with it as it grows, some parts degrade and others are renewed as the individual hand-work of citizens flows together.

For more information about this project, visit Mandy's MMMM blog.

Photo courtesy of artist

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Mandy Greer is a mixed-media installation artist with an MFA from the University of Washington - where she held a Jacob K. Javitz Graduate Fellowship. Her work has shown at Tacoma Art Museum, Henry Gallery, 4Culture Gallery, Soil & Consolidated Works; also at Bucheon Gallery & The Lab, in San Francisco, & the Tampa Museum of Art. She received a 4Culture Special Projects Grant & an Artist Trust Fellowship in 2004. In 2006, Mandy completed a permanent installation in the Seattle Central Library; as well as an installation at the Bumbershoot Arts Festival and Center on Contemporary Art, funded by a grant from 4Culture and a City Artists Grant. In 2008 Mandy had her first solo museum show at the Bellevue Arts Museum, ‘Dare alla Luce’, along with a survey of her work from the past decade, funded by a 2007 4Culture Special Projects Grant and 2008 Artist Trust GAP grant. She was nominated for the Portland Museum of Art’s Contemporary Northwest Artist Awards for 2008. In 2009, ‘Dare alla Luce’ traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Craft, in Portland, Mandy received a 4Culture Special Projects grant & has been nominated for the Louise Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Her most recent projects are about blending community, installation & performance; including the “Silvering Path” -- featured on the cover Fiberarts Magazine, May 2009 -- and “Mater Matrix Mother and Medium”, 2009, a process-based temporary public art experience commissioned by Seattle Public Utilities involving community action, site-embedded installation and performance produced with dancer Zoe Scofield and composer Morgan Henderson. She will be premiering a solo show of installations and photography at Roc La Rue Gallery, Seattle in January 2011, funded by City Artists and 4Culture Grants.

SPONSORS: