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Caroline Latham-Stiefel: Greenhouse Mix
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Within contemporary art, there has been a well-noted renewal of interest in process and materials in the current practices of artists, designers, and architects. Consequently scholars and professionals have begun to consider the definition of craft outside the tightly defined perimeters that have been determined by history to be an anti-theoretical process of crafting meticulous objects in a gien medium. Given this conservative historical marginalization, craft has the potential of questioning the boundaries of its own conventions even more so than other fields in contemporary art. The most in craft-based media are those who challenge these historical standards, providing a self-reflexivity to their practice, and considering the term as an active subject to be questioned in innovative ways.
Exhibitions at the Art Alliance always aim to present artists whose work fundamentally reexamines itself within the field. The installation of “Greenhouse Mix” by Caroline Lathan-Stiefel contributes to this ongoing discussion of this very loaded term. Her choice of commonplace materials often associated with children’s craft projects such as pipe cleaners, recycled bags and other household objects suggests a conscientious rejection of “serious” craft media or the mastery of a traditional technique. Yet her forms are meticulously twisted and combined to create extremely intricate large-scale installations that consider the unique features of the galleries of the Art Alliance. Built in 1906 as the home of the Wetherill family, the rigid delineation of these galleries still reflects the standard models of the Victorian home, and as with most mansions of the period, the first floor of the Wetherill residence contained two formal sitting rooms, a public reception room to greet guests and a parlor room for entertaining. In this context, “Greenhouse Mix” invites connections between craft and conceptual art practices, bringing the usual assumptions of craft as domestic ornament into the realm of installation art.
Responding to these period room details, the reconfiguration of her piece green-house is inspired by the form and pattern of the stacked stones of botanist John Bartram’s Philadelphia greenhouse, which he built himself. Victorian-style ferneries and the idea of a “jungle in the salon” were the catalyst for the second installation, “Hothouse,” using textiles and real ferns accompanied by a recorded sound piece entitled Playing with Fire (by Van Stiefel). Her third project in the stairway of the PAA, Frakturing, echoes the shapes and colors of both Pennsylvania Dutch Fraktur designs and the original 1905 stained glass window that features botanical imagery and plant forms. Addressing issues of plant diversity and sustainability in this age of fracking, this final work brings her work full circle by addressing present day environmental concerns within an historical context.
Caroline Lathan-Stiefel received a MFA from Maine College of Art in 2001, and a BA in Digital Arts from Brown University in 1989. She has had major solo and two person exhibitions at: The Bascom, Highlands, NC (2013); Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, Miami, FL (2012); Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD (2011); Tiger Strikes Asteriod, Philadelphia, PA (2010); Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta, GA (2009); and The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art (2009); among many others. Her public art project Ocean, was a large-scale outdoor installation created for the Brown-Hayes Department Store Building, Atlanta, GA. Her work is represented in several collections including The West Collection, Oaks PA; Hunterdon Museum, Clinton, NJ; Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ; Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ; New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ and the Zimmerli Museum, New Brunswick, NJ. She is the recipient of The West Prize as well as grants from the Independence Foundation, the Pollock Krasner Foundation and Creative Capital Foundation.