Trained as a painter, visual artist Kristin Cammermeyer has been working on site-specific installations for about a year and used her first MacDowell residency to explore more deeply the relationship of the site to her work. As a result, her time in historic Alexander Studio proved a real treat.
“I was really excited to get this particular studio because it’s a completely different vernacular than I’m used to” Cammermeyer said. “I’ve been working in kind of industrial spaces and this one had a different resonance to it, especially with all the stone and archways.”
Cammermeyer has been using found and salvaged materials for her work, and coming to the MacDowell forced her to think about stripping her work down to the bare essentials. Her MacDowell installation (you can see a stop-motion video of it above) involved furniture she found in her studio, equipment borrowed from the colony maintenance staff, objects collected from the surrounding woods, and sound and video recorded around MacDowell grounds.
Her residency in Alexander Studio, which is modeled after a votive chapel in Saas Fe, Switzerland, provided the opportunity to create a work of multiple planes when viewed from a specific point, which falls apart as soon as the viewer enters beyond the designated viewing point.
Cammermeyer will be creating a new installation at SOMArts gallery in San Francisco beginning on November 22. She will invite viewers to watch through narrow openings in a constructed cube as she creates the installation during a group exhibition called “All Good Things…” Once complete, she’ll open it up for the remainder of the show, which runs through December 21.
