CULTIVATOR AT BRAY GROVE FARM

Joanne Aono, host & curator

Kate Ingold, artist

Reception at the farm on Monday, September 7 (Labor Day) from 3-5pm.

rsvp to JoanneAono@hotmail.com

Study of the Forbidden Stitch

I installed “Study of the Forbidden Stitch,” a three-dimensional line drawing made of sisal twine and real gold thread (old/new stock from Japan used to make obi and kimono) strung between two trees on the lawn of the farm house. Echoing the woven and wound installations of Anne Wilson’s Walking the Warp and To Cross (Walking New York), and the movement of the farmer and his equine helpers as they walk in uneven, hand-drawn lines across the farm’s field, the drawing was difficult to install and vulnerable to sagging within hours or with the first rain, as the twine broke easily and was prone to disintegration. The precarious nature of the drawing reflects the nature of farming itself, as the farm’s success depends on the consistent physical labor of the farmers and their mules, the weather, and other relatively unpredictable elements. As a series of parallel lines strung low between tree trunks, the drawing became an added visual to the horizon that is noticeably present at the farm. Bound by a white fence and surrounded by the tall standing corn of neighboring farmers’ fields, the site opens up to the sky on a decidedly human scale, free from the massive verticality of the city just 70 miles northeast. My husband helped me install the piece, and as we walked to stretch the twine between the two trees, we slowly wore a path into the grass on either side of the drawing, marking the ground just as the farmers leave their marks when they work the field. I wrote a poem years ago titled ‘Studies of the Forbidden Stitch’ which relates to this installation.  www.kateingold.com

I am a visual artist and poet working in a variety of media, from stitched and etched drawings on digital-photograph substrates to textiles made from recycled and new materials, sculptural and video installation, and image/text collage. In my work, I examine issues of disturbance, reparation and collapse, and the nostalgia and regret that can accompany loss. Many of the images and textiles are paired with poems, where image and text emerge from multiple layers of meaning and method. I am inspired by Japanese haiga painters and modernists who moved between image and text fluidly. 

I work in series driven by conceptual and aesthetic ideas. Series from the past ten years include 21st Century Retablo, a group of drawings paired with poems about war, loss, and the salt-stain Virgin apparition that appeared in Chicago in 2005; Dream of Water, addressing ecological destruction, commodification, mutual ascendancy and collapse; and Local Programs/A Salute to the American Girl, image/poem collages made from 1970s TV Guides. My current series is Damaged Goods/Small Repairs, an exploration of loss, mourning, and the body.  So far, the series includes repaired and embellished damaged mourning quilts, drawings on photographs, collage, and video. 

Kate Ingold is a visual artist and poet. She received her BA in English-Rhetoric with a minor in Visual Art from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and her MFA in Studio Writing (Image/Text) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was awarded an Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Finalist Award in 2009, the Poetry Society of America’s National Chapbook Fellowship in 2007, and a CAAP Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs in 2001. Ingold’s poetry chapbook, Dream of Water, was published by the Poetry Society of America in 2008. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Fisher Museum of Art and the Illinois State Museum. She was represented by the Roy Boyd Gallery in Chicago until its closing in fall 2014.

kateingold@gmail.com

Joanne Aono is an artist as well as curator of Cultivator – Chicago Exhibitions & Farm Projects. Her drawings and paintings have shown in solo and two person exhibitions at Images, Lee Dulgar, South Shore Arts, Eyeporium, Dayton Street, 303 Erie Artspace Galleries, and Firecat (2016) as well as group shows at the Illinois State Museum, Rockford Art Museum, Evanston Art Center, Riverside Art Center, White Box Gallery, White Ripple Gallery, Julius Caesar, Contemporary Art Workshop, Governors State University, Woman Made Gallery, Beverly Art Center, and Art Chicago International. She has received City of  Chicago Arts grants and a fellowship residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Joanne Aono’s art has been reviewed in publications such as Hyperallergic, ArtLetter, Northwest Indiana Times, and the Huffington Post. She maintains studios in Chicago and on a farm in North Central Illinois.