Studio 1A: Dancia Maier: Artist talk Collection Gallery 04/011/14

Danica Maier: An American artist based in England. She Graduated from Goldsmiths in 2002 with an MA in Textiles.

Maier’s practice is primary textile based, for her solo exhibition at The Collection Gallery ‘Stitch and Peacock’ Maier took influence from selected embroidery and textiles pieces from the Usher Gallery Archives.

The exhibition holds traditional element combined with a new contemporary approach to recreating work.

A list of influences and processes Maier mentioned in her talk that she finds important in her work.

• A forgotten purpose
• Past/Personal interests
• Cultural Backgrounds
• Figuring out by doing
• Repeating through repeating 

Maier’s work mimics the original work but not through copying, Maier takes aspects of the pieces and the ideas and history associated with them. She considers the repetition of objects, through scale and perspective, how one is placed, how one looks.  She will stand back and look at her work from afar, from different angles, from the perspective of the viewer.

Maier explores the line of stitch combined with the line of pencil, I found the two comparisons interesting, the mark of the stich happens at the end, the action comes first leaving behind the mark as opposed to the pencil, the mark comes first, they mimic each other.

Maier had a large scale site specific exhibition space

• Big walls, grey, neutral 
• Isolated from the world
• Peaceful
• Wall pieces, nothing in the centre 

The entire exhibition was carefully positioned, planned out and organised

‘Flock of Birds’  Large piece using the entirety of the wall space.  Symbolizes a change of season summer-autumn. 

• Mass, Flying together
• Range of different species of birds
• Pixelated 
• Continuous
• Notion 

Maier did many observational drawings of different types of birds, in the end using a 3^rd of what she had drawn.

She selected different types of birds in the flock, to fly together which doesn’t usually happen, again breaking the boundaries and changing the viewer’s perception on what is considered the norm.

Maier’s work questions the expectations of work being nice and decorative, the idealised view of crafts being women’s work.  She playfully pokes fun at these traditional conceptions through inserting hidden phrases such as ‘tit’ ‘breast’ and ‘cunt’ referencing to the animals in her work, but allowing the viewer to form their own ideas of the words, giving a new meaning to the work that it can be subjective.

The words cleverly hidden within the work, not visible at first glance, with Maier’s work about feminism, the hiding of the words could suggest a way of expressing herself freely, it’s not something everyone will see, but we choose to see it, by looking closer and appreciating a women’s work.