“[Rachel] Harrison reports that they [she and Nayland Blake] met seven summers ago while teaching in the sculpture department of the Bard MFA program. They struck up a friendship upon realizing that they both rewarded themselves after a grueling day of crits by going shopping to places they never visited in New York City—Walmart, Target, and, especially, Michael’s craft store in Kingston, NY, where Harrison says they “get all excited looking at grandma craft kits.” They take their critical thinking to the shops with them. Once, at Michael’s, Blake spotted a whitefeathered owl and said to Harrison, “You might need this for your work.” It’s lying around in her studio, waiting to appear in one of her pieces. The idea is one that harkens back to Schwitters and passes through Rauschenberg: de-contextualizing consumer goods and recycling discarded stuff is the basis of a daily sculptural engagement with the world of objects around us—the street is as much a studio as, well, the studio. Both artists mine the inherent theatricality of objects for display.”
Anne Percoco 