Gardenship: First Voyage

Curated by John Bisbee

February 27, 2020 - April 25, 2020

About The Show

A vast, empty warehouse sat in the brown fields of Kearny Point waiting for someone with a vision to give it new life. An intrepid crew of fourteen Maine artists accepted the challenge, relishing the opportunity to build a new creative community out of an old navy yard. From little more than this notion and the space, Gardenship was created.

Just a few months into the creation of Gardenship, these artists exhibit the first works created in this reborn space. This body of work is an artifact of their voyage, a visual touchstone that provides some tangible measure of their larger and more nebulous act of cultivating a space and community in harmony with those communities already in Kearny, New Jersey. The exhibition is an exciting glimpse into how this monumental project is shaping these Maine artists and influencing their work as they react to a new space and community. Where they will take Gardenship and where it will take them remains a wonderful mystery. This is the First Voyage.

The Gardenship

Featured Artists

Featured

Kwesi Abbensetts

Kwesi Abbensetts' work is tightly bound to his identity. Consequently, his work and subjects become a rendered celebration of his culture. His work is concerned with what he calls “Revisionary Self Appropriation.”

Henry Austin

Henry Austin is a visual artist living and working in Portland, ME. In the spring of 2018, Austin founded, and now co- directs, New System Exhibitions - an alternative project space and exhibition venue for emerging, local, and regional artists.

John Bisbee

Throughout thirty years of abstract humming, the nail has never failed me. Anchored only by its form and materiality, I reveled in the nail’s infinite possibilities.

Samantha Butler

Samantha Butler is a multidisciplinary artist and designer based out of Portland, Maine and Kearny, New Jersey.

Sara Cannon

Sara Cannon was raised on Peaks Island, Maine. She received her BFA in animation from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2012.

Alice Jones

Alice Jones lives in Portland, Maine and is a current artist in residence at the Gardenship at Kearny Point in Kearny, New Jersey.

Isaac Jaegerman

Isaac Jaegerman was born and raised in Portland, Maine. He works in mixed media to examine dual natures: things that are simultaneously fragile and strong, meditative and vibrating with activity, representational and abstract.

James Larson

Born and raised in rural New Hampshire, Jim Larson is a sculptor whose work synthesizes traditional craft with our contemporary, digital, cultural practice.

Elijah Ober

Elijah Ober was born in New Hampshire and grew up in Southern Maine. His work combines found materials with his own fabrications to create objects with basic functional aspirations and fugitive presence.

Tom Ryan

Spanning painting, sculpture, installation, and print media, Tom Ryan’s practice examines the flaws, incompleteness, and incoherence of human sensory perception.

Kenny Shapiro

Kenny Shapiro has spent the past two years working as a sculptor and studio assistant for John Bisbee after graduating from Bowdoin College in 2018. He makes formally and materially simple objects through redundant, rote, and ritualistic processes.

Cody Stack

Cody Stack was raised in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Currently, his primary artistic focus is painting; his recent work utilizes fundamental dualities to focus on the inherent contradictions that underlie his artistic decision-making.

Emilie Stark-Menneg

Emilie is an interdisciplinary artist, working in painting, video, and sculpture. In 2019, she received my MFA in painting from RISD.

Nevan Swanson

Nevan Swanson is a photographer and filmmaker. As a 2018 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, he embarked on a self-designed project outside the US, wherein he explored the relationship between documentation and experience.