With textiles, embroidery, whittling, ceramics, collage, photography and 3D printing, HomeEc references the domestic realm in concept and craft. The participating artists hail from Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and New York and contribute a variety of unique considerations of home, domesticity, privacy, tradition, belonging and displacement.

Ceramicist Summer Carmack evokes the tradition of afternoon tea, while Nick DeFord gently rebels against traditional notions of the home front in embroidery and image. Joe Ford's 3D printed cul-de-sac addresses privacy and surveillance. Paul Loughney's collages of floating millwork and destabilized architectural detail face Cara Sullivan's photographs of burnt interiors. Jenna Richards presents ghostly ceramic shells of folded garments - memorials to time and care - while Rowan Haug's paper quilt top floats on ambient air flow suggesting clothes drying on the line. A second work by Sullivan documents a performance in which she mimics the catnap and the charming collection of hand whittled spoons by Marty Haug deliver both a variety and unity of form.

Cara Sullivan / Artist Statement:

In Cat Nap, I pose reclined across the back of the couch in the oft repeated position (and location) of my cat’s preference. This is more than an exercise in attempting to understand the cat’s point of view, or the fulfillment of my desire for happiness; the bliss of lying in a patch of sun. It is drawing on the human-animal connection--a connection upon which myths are based, and dreams attempt to reconcile. We live a highly mediated, and increasingly technological existence, which brings with it many wonders, but we still long to be wild. In Cat Nap, the silver print is subtly blurred and distorted radially, to create a dreamlike image of someone dreaming. In this surreal space, anything is possible. The human figure takes on the presence of the family interloper: an animal that has not relinquished its wildness completely, but rather lives in both the domestic world and in nature. This disruption of the domestic space is pleasing to me.