Wave Hill announces overture to Whirl, a Sunroom Project by Janelle Iglesias. For this new work, Iglesias mimics the construction strategies of the bowerbird to create an immense, intricately adorned, sculptural environment. The bowerbird, an avian “installation artist,” is known for its obsessive scavenging of detritus to decorate elaborately designed habitats, or bowers. Accordingly, Iglesias collected materials from her neighborhood as well as on the grounds of Wave Hill and its immediate vicinity, to create her own bower in the Sunroom.
In the process, Iglesias marries natural elements with synthetic ones, configuring a scavenged coat rack into a tree-like armature woven with felled branches and discarded umbrellas. Inspired by a tree house built at Wave Hill by Mark Twain in 1902, as well as by the bird life and beehives on Wave Hill’s grounds, she intends for the piece to have a frenetic, whirling energy. To this end, she hones in on unexpected, quirky details, such as pinwheels of coffee stir-sticks and brightly colored feathers, which suggest a feeling of aerial movement. This project also demonstrates a conscious effort on the artist’s part to make artwork with environmentally and socially responsible intentions. In repurposing these objects, she employs a resourcefulness of means that allows even the most unwanted refuse to become something distinctly beautiful.
Janelle Iglesias exhibited this year in the Queens International 4, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY, where she exhibited both independently and with her sister Lisa, as part of a team they call Las Hermanas Iglesias. This year, Las Hermanas were artists-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council residency program. Janelle has been an artist-in-residence at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA; the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE; Sculpture Space, Utica, NY; and will be attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME, this summer. She received a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Emory University, Atlanta, GA, in 2002, and an MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, in 2006.
Organized by Assistant Curator Leigh Ross, the Sunroom Project Space provides an opportunity for New York-area emerging artists to develop a special project or create a new body of work to exhibit in a solo show. The five artists exhibiting in the 2009 season are: Cece Cole, Steven Millar, Janelle Iglesias, Audrey Hasen Russell and Mauro Zamora.
Public Programs
June 7, 1pm, Meet the Artist.
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