Collection: BOOTY BODY

BOOTY BODY is an exhibition by twenty visual artists working across fibers, drawing, painting, and ceramics. Named by artist Bonnie Thorne, the exhibition explores patterns, the body, and the power of repeated marks and gestures over time.

As in weight-lifting or dancing, there are patterns in art making. BOOTY BODY illuminates the repetitive moves that artists make in the studio and the incredible accumulation of marks, ideas, and physical work that can come with that. In her 15-foot weaving, Devra Goldstein records the repeated movements of her hands at the loom in a colossal expanse of yarn and found fibers. In his cyclical drawings, Vance Diamond repeats revolutions of pencil over paper to share visions of outer space. In a series of intensely detailed, handwritten artist books, Victor Van transcribes the audible repetitions of public radio.  

Repeated gestures at the loom or easel form a kind of muscle memory that allow an artist to move nimbly from one piece to the next. Some artists in the exhibition, having called Interact their studio for over twenty years, are building massive bodies of work that trace decades of persistence as much as singular vision. 

BOOTY BODY also explores the body as an artist’s creative muse, and as one that can either align with or disrupt socio-political patterns. From HML’s wearable muscle suit and Janice Essick’s lounging nude, to Philip Price’s pop culture portraits and Briana Shelstad’s Wonder Woman dress, BOOTY BODY presents bodies and the patterns that they wear or shirk, exploring fantasy, body image, and sexuality. 

Artists in the exhibition include Garret Anderson, Katie Bretzman, Katie Brinkman, Bill Crane, Vance Diamond, Janice Essick, Devra Goldstein, Peder Hagen, Kramer Hegenbarth, HML, Andie Kiley, Krystal Lewis, Lucy Picasso, Philip Price, Dan Schlag, Andrew Seymour, Briana Shelstad, Victor Van, Loni Joy Watts, and BDG Wolfe.