Empty Frames
4 diptychs using Photographs cut by Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series workshop attendees, sound by Todd Bowser collaborated with workshop attendees
sizes vary
2015- 2020
Artifacts from the Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series workshop at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in April 2015. Original images taken by Sean Dungan.
Visitors were asked WHAT WOULD YOU STEAL?
Dutch Room (1) | Photographs cut by Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series workshop attendees | 71.5 x 24”
Dutch Room (2) | pattern made with cutouts from photographs cut by Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series workshop attendees | 29 x 36”
Short Gallery (1) | photographs cut by Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series workshop attendees | 35 x 35"
Short Gallery (2) | pattern made with cutouts from photographs cut by Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series workshop attendees | 20 x 20"
Blue Room (2) | Photographs cut by Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series workshop attendees | 24 x 35"
Blue Room (2) | pattern made with cutouts from photographs cut by Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series workshop attendees | 30 x 12"
Courtyard (1) | Photographs cut by Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series workshop attendees | 36 x 24"
Courtyard (2) | pattern made with cutouts from photographs cut by Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series workshop attendees | 18 x 12"
In 2015 as Polly Thayer Starr Artist Series visiting artist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum I asked visitors “What would you steal”? in a daylong workshop open to anyone in the museum. During the workshop I invited visitors to remove items from printed images of the courtyard and galleries that lost items in 1990. Xacto knives were provided to mimic the method used to extract paintings during the infamous theft 25 years prior. As a counter to the depleted photographs, I arranged the extracted items into designs from the wallpaper pattern of the Dutch Gallery, the room with the most loss.
Visitors were also asked to read catalog descriptions of specific items in the collection for a sound collage by Todd Bowser. The project took the overwhelming presence of those absent items in the galleries, and paired it with insight into what visitors decided to extract and leave behind in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Empty Frames is a love letter to an institution that shaped my aesthetic fascinations as a young artist, including its public display of loss.
PROCESS
Dutch Room
pattern reference