Floating

My recent wall sculpture is made of unexpected materials that are not from art stores but rather from places that sell building materials, hardware, office supplies and even toys. I have been working with construction fencing, PVC pipes, foam insulation, hula hoops, swimming noodles, and more, using (and reusing) these light and colorful elements to form hanging sculptures that makes one look twice. Don't I know that stuff? Haven't I see it before?

Eventually, the wall in my studio was so full of holes that I couldn't keep nailing into the sheetrock to hang and to photograph my new pieces. I spackled and painted the wall, then not wanting to spoil the surface,  nailed a horizontal strip of wood the whole length of the main wall, about 80 inches above floor.  Recent work hangs from pins and nails at that level. It's the dividing line, nothing above and everything below.

As AIR began to discuss Underwater New York and to think about the harbor, things on strings seemed to resemble fishing apparatus with mysterious catches or perhaps buoyant moving objects below the surface. I noticed the blue tubey stuff at Home Depot at about the same time...not that the real harbor is swimming pool blue, but on a good day, the surface of the water reflects the sky. And below the waterline, anything goes.

About the Artist

Erica Stoller has always been interested in bands of color....either painted on canvas, drawn on paper, and now with sculpture made of unexpected materials that  include plumbing conduit, pipe insulation, hula hoops,  and even ping pong balls.. In this new work, the shapes and the colors are the same element, recognizable for what they were meant to be and, in reconfiguration, for what they've become.

Stoller studied painting at Bennington, worked briefly in the Primitive Art Department at the Brooklyn Museum, and is the Director of Esto, the architectural photography agency.

This artwork was a part of the AIR Gallery summer exhibition, "If These Walls..." on Governor's Island. AIR Gallery and UNY initiated a collaboration where three writers created poems based on a water-inspired work from the exhibition. Poet Morgan Parker worked from Erica Stoller's "Floating"--you can read her poem here.