Hetty Baiz and Jordan Seaberry
Curated by Paige Laino
*Closed on Saturday, November 5.
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 13; 6:00–8:00PM
Exhibition Hours: Wednesday–Saturday; 10:00AM–5:00PM
Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and the Skowhegan Alumni Alliance are excited to announce the fifth and final exhibition in CONFERENCE CALL: a series of five 2-person exhibitions featuring the work of Skowhegan alumni. Opening on October 12, the exhibition will feature the work of Hetty Baiz (she/her) (A '69) and Jordan Seaberry (he/his) (A '15), and is curated by Alliance member and Skowhegan Alumni & Archives Manager, Paige Laino (she/they). The show will have an opening reception on October 13 from 6:00–8:00PM and will take place at the Skowhegan Office in Chelsea, New York.
Both Jordan Seaberry and Hetty Baiz work, procedurally and conceptually, with layers: in his almost historic-scale painted collages, Seaberry layers the past upon the present; in her handling of the human form, Baiz layers intimacy upon anonymity upon handwoven textiles. Together, their work presents a dialogue between personal and communal experiences of aspiration and alienation.
About Hetty Baiz
Hetty Baiz creates paintings characterized by rich textural surfaces and interwoven layers of image, color and material. Made from complex processes that can include digital manipulation, printing, weaving, painting, drawing and burning with a torch, the final images in her latest work—life size figures and larger than life faces—are literally built into the material. Open-ended questions about transience and the nature of being—of identity, mortality, and time, are intrinsic to her work. Baiz was educated at Bard College, Cornell and Columbia. She has painted all of her life and was greatly influenced by her mother, an abstract expressionist painter and student of Hans Hofmann. She has shown her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally and has taken part in collaborative art projects in China, Tibet, Dubai, Australia and France. Baiz has taught art with an NGO that supporters underserved women in the informal settlements outside of Cape Town, South Africa, and this experience greatly influenced her latest body of work. https://www.hettybaiz.com/
About Jordan Seaberry
Jordan Seaberry is a painter, organizer, legislative advocate and educator. Born and raised on the Southside of Chicago, Jordan first came to Providence to attend Rhode Island School of Design. Alongside his art, he built a career as a grassroots organizer, helping to fight for, and pass multiple criminal justice reform milestones, including Probation Reform, the Unshackling Pregnant Prisoners Bill, and laying the groundwork for the “Ban the Box” movement in Rhode Island. Jordan serves as Co-Director of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, a people-powered nonprofit agency, and most recently worked as the Director of Public Policy at the Nonviolence Institute. He serves as Chairman of the Providence Board of Canvassers, overseeing the city’s elections; as a Board Member at New Urban Arts in Providence; and as a Board Member for Protect Families First, working on community-oriented drug policy reform. He has received fellowships from the Art Matters Foundation, the Rhode Island Foundation, and recently served as Community Leader Fellow at Roger Williams University School of Law. http://www.jordanseaberry.com/
CONFERENCE CALL | Exhibition Series 2022 aims to place work by artists from different Skowhegan cohorts in conversation with each other, and with the labor of operating a residency. It will feature the works of Skowhegan alumni: Pío Galbis (A '82, '21) and Buster Graybill (A '07); Gwendolyn Kerber (A '79) and Rocío Olivares (A '18); Baxter Koziol (A '17) and Molly Springfield (A '06); Pallavi Singh (A '15) and Jing (Ellen) Xu (A '16); Hetty Baiz (A '69) and Jordan Seaberry (A '15).
Each pairing is curated by one or two members of the Alumni Alliance: Jesus Benavente (A '12), Rebecca
Shippee (A '18) and Annette Cyr (A '76, '21), Michael Scoggins (A '03), Danny Greenberg (A '18) and Eleanor Kipping (A '18), and Paige Laino (Alumni & Archives Coordinator). Additional information about upcoming exhibitions in this series is forthcoming.
The Skowhegan Alumni Alliance is a group of alumni who generate off-campus programming for the international alumni community.