STILL CURIOUSER...

For further investigation, here is a list of resources that relate to the exhibit...

1. Joseph Cornell Shadowplay Eterniday (Thames + Hudson, 2006)
2. Jan Švankmajer Alice feature length film (First Run Features DVD, 1988).
3. Brothers Quay “The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer” animated short film. Available on The Brothers Quay
Collection: Ten Astonishing Short Films 1984-1993 (Kino Video DVD, 2000)
4. Walter Benjamin “Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting.” From Illuminations (Shocken, 1969).
5. Rosamund Wolff Purcell & Stephen Jay Gould Finders, Keepers, Treasures and Oddities of Natural
History (W.W. Norton & Co., 1992)
6. Allison Kyle Leopold Cherished Objects, Living with and Collecting Victoriana (Potter, 1991)
7. Sandy Puckett Fragile Beauty, The Victorian Art of Pressed Flowers (Warner Books, 1992)
8. Lynn Barber The Heyday of Natural History (Doubleday & Co. 1980)
9. Lawrence Wechsler Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (Vintage, 1996)
10. David Wilson The Museum of Jurassic Technology. Link to website: www.mjt.org
11. Susan Stewart On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Duke University Press Books, 1993).
12. Anna Atkins Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. Viewable on the New York Public Library website’s digital image gallery. Link: digitalgallery.nypl.org
13. Philipp Blom To have and to hold: an intimate history of collectors + collecting (Overlook Press, 2004).
14. Richard Fortey Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum (Knopf, 2008).
15. Stephen T. Asma Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums (Oxford, 2003).

CURATORS' BIOGRAPHIES

Erik Carlson is an RI-based media artist, composer and architect who works under the name AREA C. His recent CD, The Planetarium Project, documents four live performances at the Museum’s Cormack Planetarium. In 2009 he received the MacColl Johnson fellowship in music composition, and he is currently completing public art installations for the Denver Public Library and Rhode Island's Department of Motor Vehicles. www.areacmusic.com

After earning a B.A. from Vassar College, Erica Carpenter went on to Brown University’s Graduate Program in Literary Arts/Poetry, where her work was recognized with awards and fellowships including the University’s Peter Kaplan Fellowship, a Beinecke Fellowship, and a Westin Prize for Poetry. She earned her M.F.A. in 1998. In 2000, Etherdome published her first chapbook, Summoned to the Fences, and in 2006 her first full‐length collection of poems, Perspective Would Have Us, was brought out by Burning Deck Press. She has also published poems in journals including Lingo, 26, Sal Mimeo, and No: A Journal of the Arts.

Erica and Erik have collaborated on numerous projects. In 2000, they created BASE, a project that began as a documentary work for the Quonset / Davisville Naval Base, but developed into a photo and text-based art piece that approached the entire abandoned property as a found object. Over the years, continuing collaborations have included: Haunts (Creative Capital finalist, 2008) an installation piece for the “pre-abandoned” neighborhoods created by America’s speculative housing bubble; and Found Ground (funded by RISCA, 2008), which used rough walls exposed up by demolition in downtown Providence as screens for text/image projections.

ARTISTS' BIOGRAPHIES

Jennifer Raimondi . Comfort
Jennifer Raimondi: Sculptor Jen Raimondi, a Rhode Island native, received her BA from Wesleyan University and her MFA from RISD. She has exhibited throughout the US for over a decade. A recipient of three grants from the RI State Council on the Arts and numerous other honors, Jen has been a faculty member at RISD and a lecturer at Chester College, Salve Regina University, and Coastal Carolina University. Jen is also a licensed therapeutic bodyworker, trained at Scherer Institute, New Mexico. Jen’s projects stitch together tidbits of nature, culture, history, and science, revealing truths via exquisitely fabricated lies; finding beauty and pathos in our common human experience. She samples historical nonfiction and hangs around museums, absorbing images and ideas that strike her with odd grace, humble brilliance, or unexpected coincidence. She cross-pollinates these; nurturing cultural cultivars whose strange fruits are paradoxically familiar. http://jenraimondi.artinruins.com


Susannah Strong . The Cabinet of Another Order
Susannah Strong was born in Houston, Texas in 1968. She received a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1990 and an MA in Visual Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2002. She is a three-time recipient of individual artist fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. In addition to her work as an artist, she has served as an archaeological illustrator in Egypt. She currently teaches at Salve Regina University and at RISD. www.susannahstrong.com


Alison Owen . exhaustive to incomplete
Alison Owen received her MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2005. She has participated in residencies at the Bronx Museum of Art in New York and foundation id11 in Delft, the Netherlands. The Rhode Island State Council for the Arts awarded Owen the New Genres fellowship in 2010. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries, including the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, Bank Gallery and Kinkead Contemporary in Los Angeles, and Artspace in New Haven. She is currently participating in a residency at Gallery Aferro in Newark, NJ. www.alisonowen.com


Erik Gould . Extinction
Erik Gould is a Rhode Island based photographer whose work has been shown in numerous solo and group shows in the region. Erik was recently awarded a RISCA project grant to create work exploring the effects of the Great Recession upon Rhode Island. This ongoing project will have it’s first showing in the Spring of 2011. Erik is employed as the Museum Photographer at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. www.erikgould.net


Adrianne Evans . Conversation
I grew up in the state of Pennsylvania, where twice a month I traveled through the Pocono Mountains and was fascinated by miles of road cuts. I received my undergraduate degree from Alfred University in the glacial region of New York State where I studied sculpture and glass and took the geology and astronomy courses that still inspire much of my work. After graduating from Alfred I traveled through out the country for a year and a half; once around by train, then once around by car. I learned the color of the soil and the texture of the landscape in each state. I then moved to Providence, Rhode Island to intern with Daniel Clayman. This turned into a full time position where I developed my skills in the processes of model making, kiln cast glass and bronze finishing. After working there for three and a half years I attended graduate school at Rhode Island School of Design to receive my Masters degree in Glass. I am currently adjunct faculty in the Glass department at RISD and have been teaching glass kiln casting since 2002. I also do freelance mold and model making. I continue to observe and draw inspiration from the natural world. www.adrianneevans.com


Lasse Antonsen . Describing the Shadows
Lasse Antonsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied art and creative writing at the Experimental Art School and at Hoelbaek Kunst Hoejskole, and later on art history at Copenhagen University. He settled permanently in the US in 1978, and received an MA in art history from Tufts University in 1986. Antonsen has taught art history and graduate studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Mass College of Art, and RISD. He has been curator of the University Art Gallery at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth since 1988. After initial explorations in art and a career as curator, art historian and critic, Antonsen returned to the practice of art six years ago. Last year he created the installation “The Continuous Translation” at the Artists Foundation in Boston, participated with the installation “Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad” in “De/Construct II” in Providence, and had a major exhibition “Theatrum Naturae et Artis” at the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River. He just finished an outdoor public artwork “Pages From the Book of Water-Gazers” at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, and will be featured in the exhibition “Uncanny” at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina later this year. www.lasseantonsen.net

THANKS...

The curators and Museum would like to thank the following people for their participation and support:

RI State Council on the Arts, RI Council for the Humanities, City of Providence Department of Parks + Recreation, Maya Allison (curatorial consultant), Steven Lubar (Humanities Advisor), Pippi Zornoza (poster design), Jon Buonaccorsi and the Head Light Hotel (poster printing), Ben Watkins Studio (casework), Peter Fuller (Cafe Intelligencia), and especially Jennifer, Susannah, Alison, Erik, Adrianne and Lasse.