By Cate McQuaid Globe Correspondent,Updated December 26, 2023, 3:28 p.m.

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March 1­–April 22, 2023

Saturday, March 4 | Artist Reception, 5–7pm | Artist Remarks, 6pm

Municipal Bonds
Minnesota Street Project
1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA

Municipal Bonds is pleased to announce “Fritz Horstman: Folded Light” on view March 1–April 22, 2023. The gallery’s first exhibition with the artist features a selection of Horstman’s Folded Cyanotypes. The work comprises deep blue images of shapes that emerge from the confluence of folded paper and sunlight.

Folded Cyanotypes are a series of two-dimensional objects, which carry the memory of light, three-dimensional space and manual manipulation, and which stem from Horstman’s interest in natural structure. They are at once sculptures and drawings, which also fit comfortably into the history of cameraless photography. Made by first folding paper by hand into an intricate pattern, they are then unfolded. Cyanotype photographic fluid is applied by brush, and then working in the dark to protect the light-sensitive material, the paper is refolded and placed in natural light, which the artist sometimes manipulates using mirrors and lenses. The paper is then rinsed in water, and pressed flat to dry. What was exposed to light in the process turns blue when developed, and what was not remains white, furthering the spatial complications by reversing lightness and darkness.

The folding patterns are Horstman’s own adaptations of tessellating patterns. Following the same physics that impels crystals to grow at certain angles, dried mud to crack in chaotic-yet-predictable ways, and produces the familiarity of the creases in a particular smile, the tessellating folding patterns interlock in ways similar to geometric tiles. Their shapes and the materiality of paper present both firm boundaries and enormous potential. Though the act of physically dealing with paper beyond a certain dimension becomes unwieldy, any of the patterns could in theory extend forever, charting the artist’s own understanding of being and space.

Municipal Bonds
Minnesota Street Project
1275 Minnesota Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
917.450.0583
info@municipalbonds.art
Wednesday–Saturday, 12–5pm

Above image: Folded Cyanotype 201, 2022, 9 x 9 in. (24 x 24 cm), cyanotype fluid on paper

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The show at Drive-By Projects in Watertown features works by painter Michelle Grabner and ceramic artist Andrea Marquis

By Cate McQuaid Globe Correspondent,Updated January 4, 2023, 11:25 a.m.

WATERTOWN — There’s a solace in the familiar designs of household textiles. Painter Michelle Grabner finds fresh edges in their timeworn imagery and honors the history and labor behind them. Patterns in upholstery and tea towels, after all, reflect the rhythms, structures, and repetitions of our ordinary days.

“The Glory of Handiwork,” at Drive-By Projects, featuring works by Grabner and ceramic artist Andrea Marquis, was inspired by Grabner’s show “Unremarkable Handiwork: Translations and Collections” at Alice Austen House on Staten Island. Austen (1866-1952) was a pioneering photographer of New York street scenes. A lesbian artist, she also documented relationships between women.
Austen’s domestic lace captivated Grabner, and it became fodder for her art. In a photograph and digital prints of doilies, she simultaneously spotlights their mundanity and their intricate artfulness. A grid of them reads like a chart of snowflakes — each one different, each a spectacular, spinning fractal pattern, but made imperfectly by hand and weathered by time.

Michelle Grabner, “Untitled,” digital print

While decorative art can be comforting in its permanence, Grabner brings a painter’s sensibility of “how can I make this fresh and new?” to her subjects. Two magical paintings, impossible to reproduce effectively in a photograph (go see them in person!), are white fields of tatting and crochet patterns. To make them, she used old handmade textiles as stencils, painting over them to reproduce their wheeling patterns, and then adding breaths of yellow and gray. The canvases are at once domestic, microbial, and snowy — endless, humble, yet shot with light. Like our ordinary days.

Andrea Marquis, “Candlestick Holder (Syrup of Figs),” hand-cut stoneware with mid-temp crystalline glaze with candles

Marquis, too, works with fractal patterns, although hers originate in her yard. She traces shadows of fig branches onto slabs of clay, then cuts them and constructs Gothic-looking structures. Because she carved the elements of “Candlestick Holder (Syrup of Figs)” and “Supersymmetry” from slabs, they retain their flat faces, but she builds them into ornate volumetric forms. The angelic “Supersymmetry” has a skirted center and lifting wings. The delicate glazes, drifting with subtle tones, nod to Grabner’s paintings.

Andrea Marquis, “Supersymmerty,” hand-built stoneware and mid-temp glaze

Fractals make up the architecture of microcosms and macrocosms. Grabner and Marquis remind us that handiwork’s rhythmic gestures and labor over time is of similar design. Our lives are formed by such patterns. To see them anew in this art is to reawaken.

READ IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

THE GLORY OF HANDIWORK
At Drive-By Projects, 81 Spring St., Watertown, through Jan 14.

Gallery Hours:
Thursday, January 14th from 12-4pm and by appointment: 617-835-8255.
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Cate McQuaid can be reached at catemcquaid@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @cmcq.

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