ARTIST STATEMENT
I create work around the idea of the net. A net can be threatening like a fishing net or reassuring like a safety net. It can be used to keep dangerous things away from us or to keep precious or fragile things safe and close to us. Nets are semipermeable. They divide space. Although we can see and speak through them, and sometimes move them aside, they create two distinct spaces.
I make nets with flame worked glass, using a torch to bend rods of glass into shape. The process is slow and repetitive, each bend made individually as I work from one end of the form to the other. I incorporate other materials in combination with the glass; yarn, thread, knit wire, brass. The process of working with each material is meticulous and always creates a net or mesh. Each material has its own specific way of reacting to gravity or air flow and showing or holding tension and slack. Sometimes the grid is apparent, other times it is tangled.
The materials that I use are essentially one dimensional. By arranging them into a grid, they not only become three dimensional but also set up a framework for which to expand upon. If the grid breaks or is compromised in one area, the rest of the piece retains its strength as it is reenforced at each connection. Although the materials that I use are fragile, delicate or breakable, the finished structure has an unexpected strength.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Marcy Chevali is an artist currently based in New York. She has a BFA from The Ohio State University and an MFA from Maine College of Art. Her work has been shown in galleries and artists’ spaces including Queens Museum of Art, Noyes Museum, Aicon Gallery, AIR Gallery, and Gallery Aferro, and with organizations such as South Asian Women’s Creative Collective, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, ABC No Rio, and Project for an Empty Space.
She has attended numerous residencies including Edward Albee Foundation, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Kimmel Harding Nelson, Urban Glass, Pittsburgh Glass Center and Willapa Bay AiR. She has received grants from the Queens Council of the Arts and FST Studio Projects. Most recently, her work was on view at the Armory show with Aicon Contemporary and in a two person show with Beca Acosta at Underdonk in New York City. Using materials including glass, wire, yarn, thread and pencil, her work addresses absence, temporality, fragility, strength and the tension that can exist between disparate themes.
© Marcy Chevali