Project Tag: 2025

13
Feb
2026
LOAN COLLECTION: Ferrin Contemporary Historical Ceramics 19th-21st Century

LOAN COLLECTION: Ferrin Contemporary Historical Ceramics 19th-21st Century

ABOUT THE FERRIN CONTEMPORARY HISTORICAL COLLECTION

Works from Ferrin Contemporary’s Resources and Collections are lent to museum exhibitions that feature works by contemporary artists represented by the gallery. The collection began decades ago with souvenir plates and developed further when sourcing material for Paul Scott to use in his New American Scenery series. The series is now on tour at museums that invite Paul to collaborate as an artist curator to select works from their permanent collections to be shown in context with his prints on ceramics, photogravures and re-animated historic transferware. An Enoch Woods, Cape Coast Castle platter depicting the slave trade in Africa was first found by Paul when researching the transferware collection at RISD Museum. A copy of that platter is available for loan and is included in his comprehensive show at the Albany Institute of History and Art.

At Ferrin Contemporary, the exhibition Our America/Whose America?  invited artists to respond to this collection with newly created and recent works that directly questioned the presumptions conveyed by the historic material.  At Norman Rockwell Museum feature in Imprinted: Illustrating Race is a case of ceramic, glass and other manufactured objects in conversation with contemporary works by Elizabeth Alexander, Garth Johnson and Paul Scott.  The collection includes souvenir objects and plates, designed and produced in England in the 19th and early 20th century, Made in Occupied Japan, and later produced in America. The series produced by Vernon Kilns designed by Rockwell Kent and Gale Turnbull “Our America” is featured in the two exhibitions on view in 2022.

Looking around at the contemporary exhibition landscape, we are in a moment of reflection. In museums and galleries throughout the Americas, artists are using found objects and repurposing materials in their work. Likewise, museum curators are looking at their permanent collections to both critique the featured content and question the paths of patronage and origin stories. Diversifying permanent collections to address past gaps and omissions through new acquisitions of works by women and artists of color.  Commissioning contemporary artists to produce site responsive works or supporting their practice by placing them in the role of artist-curator is providing opportunities for scholarship and engagement with new audiences. Together as we all reflect on the past by examining what was hidden in plain sight, we move forward, informed of the forces that still impact our lives today.

Leslie Ferrin, Director of Ferrin Contemporary, Collector

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HISTORICAL COLLECTION

INQUIRE TO TOUR ITEMS FROM FERRIN CONTEMPORARY’S HISTORICAL COLLECTION

IN EXHIBITIONS | RECENT LOCATIONS

IMPRINTED:ILLUSTRATING RACE

DELAWARE ART MUSEUM

2301 Kentmere Pkwy, Wilmington, DE

October 18, 2025  –  March 1, 2026

INSTALLATION PHOTOS

OUR AMERICA/WHOSE AMERICA?

Wickham House at the Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA

February 20, 2024 – April 21, 2024

INSTALLATION PHOTOS

IMPRINTED:ILLUSTRATING RACE

NORMAL ROCKWELL MUSEUM

9 Glendale Road, Stockbridge, MA

June 11, 2022 – October 30, 2022

INSTALLATION PHOTOS

CONTEMPORARY WORKS

OUR AMERICA/WHOSE AMERICA?

FERRIN CONTEMPORARY

1015 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, MA

August 6 – October 30, 2022

INSTALLATION PHOTOS

03
Oct
2025
JACQUELINE BISHOP in: The River That Flows Both Ways, Bobst Library, NYU

JACQUELINE BISHOP in: The River That Flows Both Ways, Bobst Library, NYU

Bobst Library, New York University

70 Washington Square S
New York, NY

On view permanently starting October 2025

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The River That Flows Both Ways showcases a series of compelling and contemplative ceramic works by visual artist Jacqueline Bishop in her pursuit of commemorating the buried, interlinked histories of the Lenape lands on which most of NYU’s New York campus is located.

Featuring archival collage digitally printed on six porcelain plates, The River That Flows Both Ways illuminates the early encounters of African enslaved laborers brought into Indigenous communities by European settlers during the 1600s. These complex interactions and intricate trade routes are juxtaposed with architectural landmarks alongside the flora and fauna native to New York.

The River That Flows Both Ways (The Island of Many Hills)
2025
Pickard China chargers with digital transfers of original collage imagery by Jacqueline Bishop, fabricated by Kala Stein Studio
12″.

MEDIA

NYU-TV

November 25th, 2025

Destinee Fillmore speaks with artist Jacqueline Bishop about her practice and her ceramic work, The River That Flows Both Ways, now a permanent exhibition on NYU Bobst Library’s 10th floor.

PAST PROGRAMMING

Exhibition Opening and Artist Conversation: The River That Flows Both Ways | In-Person

Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Time Zone: Eastern Time – US & Canada (change)
Location: Bobst Library, 10th Floor, North Reading Room

Join NYU artist and professor Jacqueline Bishop for the opening of The River That Flows Both Ways at Bobst Library

Join NYU Libraries and the School of Liberal Studies in celebrating the opening of The River That Flows Both Ways, a commissioned installation by artist and professor Jacqueline Bishop. The event will feature a conversation between the artist and Destinee Filmore from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jacqueline Bishop is a Jamaican-born writer, visual artist, scholar, and Clinical Full Professor of Liberal Studies at NYU. Her art renders marginalized voices visible across the African diaspora, and spans mediums including porcelain, collage, painting, and textiles.

Destinee Filmore is a curator, art historian, and cultural preservationist. Her research focuses on expansive histories of the visual and material culture of the United States and broader Atlantic World. She is the founder of On This Land—an interdisciplinary project that identifies, documents, and saves sites of historical importance.

Doors open at 6:00 p.m. and a conversation with the artist will begin at 6:30. This event is co-sponsored by NYU Liberal Studies and NYU Libraries.

This event has now passed.

ABOUT JACQUELINE BISHOP

Jacqueline Bishop is an accomplished writer, academic, and visual artist with exhibitions in Belgium, Morocco, Italy, Cape Verde, Niger, USA, and Jamaica. In addition to her role as Clinical Full Professor at New York University, Jacqueline Bishop was a 2020 Dora Maar/Brown Foundation Fellow in France; 2008-2009 Fulbright Fellow in Morocco; and 2009-2010 UNESCO/Fulbright Fellow in Paris. Bishop has received several awards, including the OCM Bocas Award for her book “The Gymnast & Other Position”, The Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for short story writing, The Arthur Schomburg Award for Excellence in the Humanities from New York University, A James Michener Creative Writing Fellowship, as well as several awards from the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission. Jacqueline’s recent ceramic work consists of brightly colored bone China plates used symbolically in Caribbean homes and explores how they hid the violent legacy of slavery and colonialism in the Atlantic world.

25
Sep
2025
JACQUELINE BISHOP in: Archives in Practice

JACQUELINE BISHOP in: Archives in Practice

Center for Craft

67 Broadway St
Asheville, NC

September 12, 2025 – February 17, 2026

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Archives can be a link to the past while reflecting the present. They often take the form of objects, memories, or contemplations from histories.

Archives in Practice features eight artists whose work is influenced by archival research. Drawing from personal, familial, and public collections, cultural heritage, and various reference materials, their work communicates the diversity of what an archive can be and how artists can activate them to retell histories that might otherwise be lost, hidden, or erased. Collectively, these artists illustrate the interconnectedness of the past, the individual, and the present—revealing the importance of connecting to one’s diaspora and community, building representation of histories, and conducting object research.

This exhibition also demonstrates the expansive quality of craft research. The artists’ work embodies themes of identity within historical contexts and through personal explorations. It engages with social issues and prompts important questions about the significance and impact of objects, photographs, and the intangible on everyday material practices.

The featured artists are Jacqueline Bishop, N.E. Brown, Ruth Hallows, Margaret Jacobs, Hùng Lê, Aaron McIntosh, and Ruth Tamura & Helen Lee.

Seven of these artists are alumni of the Center for Craft. Two of the artworks on display—Gisma̱xsa G̱a̱tgyedm Na Sigidmhanaa’na̱gm, Our Matriarchs Endow Our Strength by Ruth Hallows, and Sojourner Truth Ain’t I A Lady by Jacqueline Bishop—are the direct result of research funded by Center for Craft grants and fellowship programs.

ARTISTS
Jacqueline Bishop
N.E. Brown
Ruth Hallows
Margaret Jacobs (Akwesasne Mohawk)
Hùng Lê
Aaron McIntosh
Ruth Tamura
Helen Lee

 

CURATED BY
Mellanee Goodman

IN CONVERSATION

Produced by the Center of Craft, Jacqueline Bishop and curator Mellanee Goodman discuss Bishop’s work in Archives in Practice. More context about Bishop’s “Ain’t I A Lady” (dress), begins around 7:30 minutes into the video.

Craft Watch: CRF20

ABOUT JACQUELINE BISHOP

Jacqueline Bishop is an accomplished writer, academic, and visual artist with exhibitions in Belgium, Morocco, Italy, Cape Verde, Niger, USA, and Jamaica. In addition to her role as Clinical Full Professor at New York University, Jacqueline Bishop was a 2020 Dora Maar/Brown Foundation Fellow in France; 2008-2009 Fulbright Fellow in Morocco; and 2009-2010 UNESCO/Fulbright Fellow in Paris. Bishop has received several awards, including the OCM Bocas Award for her book “The Gymnast & Other Position”, The Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for short story writing, The Arthur Schomburg Award for Excellence in the Humanities from New York University, A James Michener Creative Writing Fellowship, as well as several awards from the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission. Jacqueline’s recent ceramic work consists of brightly colored bone China plates used symbolically in Caribbean homes and explores how they hid the violent legacy of slavery and colonialism in the Atlantic world.

09
Sep
2025
CRISTINA CÓRDOVA in: Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora

CRISTINA CÓRDOVA in: Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora

September 9 – December 6, 2025

Katherine E. Nash Gallery
405 21st Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455
The Katherine E. Nash Gallery is housed with the Regis Center for Art on the University of Minnesota west bank campus.

Featuring work by Cristina Córdova

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Derived from Spanish for “back-and-forth movement,” vaivén is most associated with the supposed ease at which Puerto Ricans migrate between the US and Puerto Rico. Beyond the comings and goings of travel, this word invokes something much more profound, naming decades of physical, cultural, and emotional ebb and flow that has resulted in more persons of Puerto Rican descent living across the fifty United States than in Puerto Rico itself. To be “of Puerto Rico” is to be inextricably linked with diaspora, Black and Caribbean epistemologies, and a constant reimagining of home and belonging. In response, Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora gathers forty-three artists whose work bears witness to a quarter century of cultural, political, and migratory oscillations, while challenging dominant cultural narratives of “island” post-disaster resiliency versus “mainland” diasporic neither-here-nor-there identity. By tracing conceptual and aesthetic intersections across a range of approaches to image- and mark-making, sculpture and installation, and sound and video, artists in the exhibition explore the hybridity of memory, language, place, and ancestral knowledge as they relate to acts of witnessing, resistance, and connection. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue document new constellations of artists who challenge geographic and cultural authenticity, racialization, and classism, that have shaped which voices define Puerto Rican contemporary art, and which continue to be devalued.

The exhibition is organized by the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, operated by the Department of Art, in association with Hidrante, San Juan. A fully illustrated bilingual English and Spanish accompanying catalogue includes contributions from Arlene Dávila, Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, Teréz Iacovino, María Elena Ortiz, José López Serra, Carlos Ortiz Burgos, and Monica Uszerowicz. Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora is made possible by support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Harlan Boss Foundation for the Arts, the University of Minnesota Imagine Fund, and Ann and Michael G. Hofkin.

VIEW THE PRESS RELEASE

ABOUT CRISTINA CÓRDOVA

Puerto Rican, b. 1976, Boston, MA
lives and works in Penland, NC

Native to Puerto Rico, Cristina Córdova creates figurative compositions that explore the boundary between the materiality of an object and our involuntary dialogues with the self-referential. Images captured through the lens of a Latin American upbringing question socio-cultural notions of gender, race, beauty, and power.  Córdova has received numerous grants including the North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship Grant, a Virginia Groot Foundation Recognition Grant, several International Association of Art Critics of Puerto Rico awards, and a prestigious United States Artist Fellowship award in 2015.

Córdova has had solo exhibitions at the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, (Alfred, NY), and her work is included in the collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, (Washington, DC), Colección Acosta de San Juan Puerto Rico, (San Juan, PR), the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, (Charlotte, NC), and Museum of Contemporary Art, (San Juan, PR). In 1998, Córdova completed her BA at the University of Puerto Rico, and she received her MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2002. Córdova is represented by Ferrin Contemporary.

02
Sep
2025
BETH LIPMAN: Oncoming Close

BETH LIPMAN: Oncoming Close

BETH LIPMAN: Oncoming Close

Trout Museum
Bank of Kaukauna Wing: Marissa & Ryan Downs Gallery ​
325 E. College Avenue
Appleton , WI

October 11, 2025 – January 4, 2026

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Artist Beth Lipman explores what it means to leave a mark on the world; what remains, what fades, and what defines a moment in human history.

Through intricate glass still lifes, Lipman creates sculptural time capsules that capture the natural and material objects shaping our present. Rooted in the tradition of still life, which has long attempted to preserve the temporary, Lipman’s work adds new layers of meaning by using glass: a material that can last for centuries or shatter in an instant. The tension between permanence and fragility underscores the inevitability of change and loss.

ABOUT BETH LIPMAN

American, b. 1971, New York, NY
lives and works in Sheboygan Falls, WI

Beth Lipman is an American artist whose sculptural practice generates from the Still Life genre, symbolically representing the splendor and excess of the Anthropocene and the stratigraphic layer humanity will leave on earth. Assemblages of inanimate objects and domestic interiors, inspired by private spaces and public collections, propose portraits of individuals, institutions, and societies.

Temporality and mortality-primary concerns linked to the Still Life tradition are heightened through materiality. Works in glass, wood, metal, photography, and video disrupt the mechanisms of fixed, grand narratives in order to emphasize evanescence at the heart of ‘vanitas’. Sculptural processes become analogies for life cycles, pointing to systems both natural and human that must continually adapt in order to survive.

The works are a meditation on our relationship to Deep Time, a monumental time scale based on geologic events that minimizes human lives. Each installation is a reimagining of history, created by placing cycles often separated by millennia in proximity, from the ancient botanical to the cultural. The incorporation of prehistoric flora alludes to the impermanence of the present and the persistence of life. The ephemera of the Anthropocene become a symbol of fragility as the human species is placed on a continuum where time eradicates hierarchy.

Lipman has received numerous awards including a USA Berman Bloch Fellowship, Pollock Krasner Grant, Virginia Groot Foundation Grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. She recently completed One Portrait of One Man, a sculptural response to Marsden Hartley for the Weisman Art Museum (MN). Lipman has exhibited her work internationally at such institutions as the Ringling Museum of Art (FL), ICA/MECA (ME), RISD Museum (RI), Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), Gustavsbergs Konsthall (Sweden) and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC). Her work has been acquired by numerous museums including the North Carolina Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), and the Corning Museum of Glass (NY).

02
Sep
2025
KADRI PÄRNAMETS: MURAKA

KADRI PÄRNAMETS: MURAKA

on view at Ferrin Contemporary

Summer Gallery
54 Main Street
Cummington, MA

Ongoing

VIEW THE PRESS RELEASE

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

CUMMINGTON, MA – Ferrin Contemporary is proud to present Kadri Pärnamets: Muraka, a new exhibition by one of Project Art’s resident artists. The exhibition features porcelain sculptures reflecting on the universal element of water and natural forms opening during Riverfest and Project Art’s Open House on Saturday, September 20th. The public is invited to a short talk with Kadri and gallery director, Leslie Ferrin followed by a reception at 4:30 pm. The exhibit is on view through November 15, 2025.

The exhibition builds on two bodies of work: Kadri Pärnamets: Choreography of Water, her 2022 solo show at Ferrin Contemporary in North Adams, Massachusetts, as well as her first site-responsive public art commission, Fire Sculpture at Claytopia at Guldagergaard in Skælskør, Denmark. The works in Muraka continue themes of abstract biomorphic forms inspired by water, air, and the changing environment of the river ecosystem. Pärnamets uses water as a metaphor; her multicolored surfaces and organic forms visually reference water’s vast, expansive body that connects land and sky and its forces that impact both protect and threaten the land, earth’s inhabitants and possibly humanity itself.

Ferrin Contemporary director Leslie Ferrin comments “Kadri’s grounding in her own environments in both Estonia and Cummington provides a deep foundation for her soft forms and surfaces. Straddling two worlds, her daily walks provide inspiration and the time for reflection as she watches the colors change and considers the impact on nature from the turbulent forces pulling us forward.”

Pärnamets chose the title for her exhibition Muraka, naming it after a place with special meaning for her in Estonia. Muraka is a nature reserve in her home country characterised by its wetlands, unspoilt forest and one of few remaining wilderness areas in north-east Estonia.

Kadri Pärnamets: Muraka includes her first large scale porcelain sculptures produced in 2025 with support from the A.R.T. 2025 grant from Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. The funding provided time and materials to expand on two series 2024 that are included in the exhibition – Fragments of Waves and Frame of Mind series’. These pieces differ in form and scale while tracing a clear flow of consciousness from her past works. Works are placed in rows like thoughts drifting to the surface, contained in their individualism, but connected as part of a wider sea or ecosystem. Her surface treatments, which alternate between matte respites and shimmering, effervescent blue glaze, speak not only to the glimmer of sun on water, but to the changing environment back home in Massachusetts. Residing along the Westfield River, Pärnamets works amongst an everpresent soundtrack of the river’s current and the hush of waving willow trees. In the studio and on her daily walks through the neighborhood, she is always observing, listening, and finding inspiration in the acute timbres and textures of the changing New England seasons.

Kadri Pärnamets: Muraka opens during the RiverFest organized by Cummington Cultural District. The family-friendly, participatory day long programs celebrate the wild and scenic Westfield River that runs through the heart of Cummington, MA. Throughout the festival, artists, humanists, and scientists share their practices and knowledge as a frame for hands-on, experiential, and sensory experiences for participants across a variety of means of engagement, including workshops, walks, guided movement, performances, and public artworks. As part of this, Kadri and her husband, sculptor Sergei Isupov, will host a day-long RAKU firing. Participants may bring up to four bisqued ceramic pieces to glaze and fire during their chosen firing slot. Visit Project Art’s event page to learn more and register.

Pärnamets’ work has been shown internationally at the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (Tallinn, Estonia), at the International Tea Trade Expo (Shanghai, China), at Guldagergaard in Skælskør, Denmark, and many others. Since 1996, she has participated in symposiums in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Switzerland, USA, Norway, and Hungary. She graduated from the Art Institute of Tallinn, Estonia with a BA/MFA in Ceramics. Dividing her time between Estonia and the USA, her primary studio is the USA at Project Art in Cummington, MA. She is represented by Ferrin Contemporary.

PROGRAMMING

OPENING RECEPTION & ARTIST TALK

September 20, 2025
4:30-5:30pm

Join Kadri Pärnamets for an artist talk about her new exhibition, Kadri Pärnamets: MURAKA, in the Summer Gallery at Ferrin Contemporary. Kadri will speak about her new series of works in the show, her process, and her life in Western, MA.

PRESS

At Ferrin Contemporary, cloud-like porcelain sculptures take shape in Kadri Pärnamets’ ‘Muraka’

By Jennifer Huberdeau, The Berkshire Eagle, September 18th, 2025

Exhibition inspired by rivers, seas and Estonian bog landscapes.

ABOUT KADRI PÄRNAMETS

Kadri Pärnamets, Artist Portrait, 2022

Estonian, b. 1968, Rakvere, Estonia
lives and works in Cummington, MA

Kadri Pärnamets works in porcelain using traditional hand building and sculpting techniques to combine surface and form. Her biomorphic, organic forms provide a means to convey her personal interests ranging from fragile, natural environments to female identity. Her surface treatments feature a range of gesture and expression with either abstract shape or narrative figure painting, inspired by painters from the European Renaissance and Impressionist eras, like Lucas Cranach the Elder and Edouard Manet.

Pärnamets’ work has been shown internationally at the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (Tallinn, Estonia), at the International Tea Trade Expo (Shanghai, China), and many others. Since 1996, she has participated in symposiums in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Switzerland, USA, Norway, and Hungary.

Pärnamets graduated from the Art Institute of Tallinn, Estonia with a BA/MFA in Ceramics. Dividing her time between Estonia and USA, her primary studio is the USA at Project Art in Cummington, MA. She is represented by Ferrin Contemporary.

08
Aug
2025
BETH LIPMAN: One-Self I Sing

BETH LIPMAN: One-Self I Sing

BETH LIPMAN: One-Self I Sing

Muskegon Museum of Art
296 W. Webster Avenue
Muskegon, MI

On view permanently

ABOUT THE INSTALLATION

One’s-Self I Sing is a large-scale, site- specific installation that investigates the current moment in relation to Deep Time.  The sculpture, measuring approximately 180” x 120” x 48”, can be thought of as an “exploded” still life, a genre that holds the capacity to illuminate the ways that we understand our world through visual metaphors.

The sculpture will converge both floors of the new expansion, offering a visual continuity between multiple landings. Different aspects of the composition will be discovered upon entering the museum, ascending/descending the stairs or viewing from the second floor. Objects that reference to the Muskegon Museum of Art’s permanent collection will be incorporated. The marriage of transparent cultural objects and opaque rock formations alludes to what is seen and known juxtaposed with what is concealed and lost over time.

One’s-Self I Sing will be permanently installed in the Fall of 2024.

ABOUT BETH LIPMAN

American, b. 1971, New York, NY
lives and works in Sheboygan Falls, WI

Beth Lipman is an American artist whose sculptural practice generates from the Still Life genre, symbolically representing the splendor and excess of the Anthropocene and the stratigraphic layer humanity will leave on earth. Assemblages of inanimate objects and domestic interiors, inspired by private spaces and public collections, propose portraits of individuals, institutions, and societies.

Temporality and mortality-primary concerns linked to the Still Life tradition are heightened through materiality. Works in glass, wood, metal, photography, and video disrupt the mechanisms of fixed, grand narratives in order to emphasize evanescence at the heart of ‘vanitas’. Sculptural processes become analogies for life cycles, pointing to systems both natural and human that must continually adapt in order to survive.

The works are a meditation on our relationship to Deep Time, a monumental time scale based on geologic events that minimizes human lives. Each installation is a reimagining of history, created by placing cycles often separated by millennia in proximity, from the ancient botanical to the cultural. The incorporation of prehistoric flora alludes to the impermanence of the present and the persistence of life. The ephemera of the Anthropocene become a symbol of fragility as the human species is placed on a continuum where time eradicates hierarchy.

Lipman has received numerous awards including a USA Berman Bloch Fellowship, Pollock Krasner Grant, Virginia Groot Foundation Grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. She recently completed One Portrait of One Man, a sculptural response to Marsden Hartley for the Weisman Art Museum (MN). Lipman has exhibited her work internationally at such institutions as the Ringling Museum of Art (FL), ICA/MECA (ME), RISD Museum (RI), Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), Gustavsbergs Konsthall (Sweden) and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC). Her work has been acquired by numerous museums including the North Carolina Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), and the Corning Museum of Glass (NY).

08
Aug
2025
BETH LIPMAN: Hive Mind

BETH LIPMAN: Hive Mind

BETH LIPMAN: Hive Mind

Iowa State University
1805 Center Drive
Ames, IA

August 25, 2025 – May 2027

ABOUT THE INSTALLATION

Hive Mind, a large-scale outdoor sculpture fabricated in bronze and glass, captures the dynamics of a highly organized social system, its circular form and rhythm evoking the perpetual cycles of production. The sculpture embodies the process of gathering, binding and conserving knowledge. Objects rise from and sink into the sculpture, hinting at how memory surfaces and recedes. Not everything is visible at all times to every viewer—an analogy for the elusive nature of memory.

Hive Mind celebrates Iowa State University’s legacy- its contributions and reverberations across critical disciplines such as science, technology and agriculture. Its genesis is its visual reference to the round hay bale, an innovation developed in the 1960’s by ISU professor Wesley Buchele. Like so many other breakthroughs, this one invention catalyzed its respective industry and revolutionized the act of harvesting. Positioned at the heart of campus, where all pathways converge, Hive Mind contains embedded clear glass objects that represent ISU’s past, present, and future.

A solo exhibition entitled Middle of the Story will be on view in the Christian Petersen Art Museum at Iowa State University beginning August 25, 2025.

ABOUT BETH LIPMAN

American, b. 1971, New York, NY
lives and works in Sheboygan Falls, WI

Beth Lipman is an American artist whose sculptural practice generates from the Still Life genre, symbolically representing the splendor and excess of the Anthropocene and the stratigraphic layer humanity will leave on earth. Assemblages of inanimate objects and domestic interiors, inspired by private spaces and public collections, propose portraits of individuals, institutions, and societies.

Temporality and mortality-primary concerns linked to the Still Life tradition are heightened through materiality. Works in glass, wood, metal, photography, and video disrupt the mechanisms of fixed, grand narratives in order to emphasize evanescence at the heart of ‘vanitas’. Sculptural processes become analogies for life cycles, pointing to systems both natural and human that must continually adapt in order to survive.

The works are a meditation on our relationship to Deep Time, a monumental time scale based on geologic events that minimizes human lives. Each installation is a reimagining of history, created by placing cycles often separated by millennia in proximity, from the ancient botanical to the cultural. The incorporation of prehistoric flora alludes to the impermanence of the present and the persistence of life. The ephemera of the Anthropocene become a symbol of fragility as the human species is placed on a continuum where time eradicates hierarchy.

Lipman has received numerous awards including a USA Berman Bloch Fellowship, Pollock Krasner Grant, Virginia Groot Foundation Grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. She recently completed One Portrait of One Man, a sculptural response to Marsden Hartley for the Weisman Art Museum (MN). Lipman has exhibited her work internationally at such institutions as the Ringling Museum of Art (FL), ICA/MECA (ME), RISD Museum (RI), Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), Gustavsbergs Konsthall (Sweden) and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC). Her work has been acquired by numerous museums including the North Carolina Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), and the Corning Museum of Glass (NY).

08
Aug
2025
BETH LIPMAN: Middle of the Story

BETH LIPMAN: Middle of the Story

BETH LIPMAN: Middle of the Story

Christian Petersen Art Museum
Iowa State University
Campbell Gallery, 1017 Morrill Hall

August 25, 2025 – February 13, 2026

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

In concert with the arrival of the newest sculpture to the Art on Campus Collection, Hive Mind by artist Beth Lipman, University Museums presents a selection of Lipman’s exceptional multimedia sculptures and two-dimensional works of art. The works of art represent a lineage of Lipman’s dynamic explorations into the layering of time examining the intertwining of humanity and nature. From her series of laid tables—featuring an overflowing abundance of fruits, foods, and material culture, all rendered in glass—to her more nuanced photographic images that place glass objects and non-natural elements within various landscapes to address broader environmental concerns, the exhibition surveys Lipman’s research-driven process and her deep connection to the people and places her art engages with. Each installation and object in the exhibition Middle of the Story demonstrates how Lipman deftly uses material culture to represent time and place in three dimensions, culminating in the development and installation of Hive Mind, a major public work of art dedicated to the past, present, and future of the impactful research and people at Iowa State University.

This exhibition is curated and organized by Beth Lipman and University Museums.

Support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Iowa Arts Council, which exists within the Iowa Economic Development Authority. Generous support for the exhibition was also given by Stewart L. Burger, Wilson Family Endowed Exhibition Fund, Paul and Lynn Hempe, Liz and Randy Hertz, Art Bridges, Marilyn and Paul Gennett, and University Museums Membership.

AVAILABLE TO TOUR

Works from Beth Lipman’s solo exhibition, Middle of The Story are available to tour at institutions and galleries across the USA. Please contact info@ferrincontemporary.com to request a checklist of works from the exhibition, exhibition specs, or additional installation photos.

ABOUT BETH LIPMAN

American, b. 1971, New York, NY
lives and works in Sheboygan Falls, WI

Beth Lipman is an American artist whose sculptural practice generates from the Still Life genre, symbolically representing the splendor and excess of the Anthropocene and the stratigraphic layer humanity will leave on earth. Assemblages of inanimate objects and domestic interiors, inspired by private spaces and public collections, propose portraits of individuals, institutions, and societies.

Temporality and mortality-primary concerns linked to the Still Life tradition are heightened through materiality. Works in glass, wood, metal, photography, and video disrupt the mechanisms of fixed, grand narratives in order to emphasize evanescence at the heart of ‘vanitas’. Sculptural processes become analogies for life cycles, pointing to systems both natural and human that must continually adapt in order to survive.

The works are a meditation on our relationship to Deep Time, a monumental time scale based on geologic events that minimizes human lives. Each installation is a reimagining of history, created by placing cycles often separated by millennia in proximity, from the ancient botanical to the cultural. The incorporation of prehistoric flora alludes to the impermanence of the present and the persistence of life. The ephemera of the Anthropocene become a symbol of fragility as the human species is placed on a continuum where time eradicates hierarchy.

Lipman has received numerous awards including a USA Berman Bloch Fellowship, Pollock Krasner Grant, Virginia Groot Foundation Grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. She recently completed One Portrait of One Man, a sculptural response to Marsden Hartley for the Weisman Art Museum (MN). Lipman has exhibited her work internationally at such institutions as the Ringling Museum of Art (FL), ICA/MECA (ME), RISD Museum (RI), Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), Gustavsbergs Konsthall (Sweden) and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC). Her work has been acquired by numerous museums including the North Carolina Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), and the Corning Museum of Glass (NY).

29
Jul
2025
SERGEI ISUPOV in: Sculpture at The Mount

SERGEI ISUPOV in: Sculpture at The Mount

The Mount | Edith Wharton’s Home

2 Plunkett St
Lenox, MA

May 24 – October 19, 2025

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Sculpture at The Mount features works of contemporary outdoor sculpture in a range of media against the backdrop of the vibrant woods, gardens, and grounds of The Mount, the historic home of American novelist Edith Wharton.  The 2025 show, comprised of 25 large-scale, juried works, will be free and open to the public from dawn to dusk. A digital guide will be available in both English and Spanish, featuring artist statements recorded in their own words.Sculpture at The Mount features works of contemporary outdoor sculpture in a range of media against the backdrop of the vibrant woods, gardens, and grounds of The Mount, the historic home of American novelist Edith Wharton.  The 2025 show, comprised of 25 large-scale, juried works, will be free and open to the public from dawn to dusk. A digital guide will be available in both English and Spanish, featuring artist statements recorded in their own words.Sculpture at The Mount features works of contemporary outdoor sculpture in a range of media against the backdrop of the vibrant woods, gardens, and grounds of The Mount, the historic home of American novelist Edith Wharton.  The 2025 show, comprised of 25 large-scale, juried works, will be free and open to the public from dawn to dusk. A digital guide will be available in both English and Spanish, featuring artist statements recorded in their own words.

ABOUT SERGEI ISUPOV

Estonian-American, b. 1963 Stavropole, USSR,
lives and works between Cummington, MA, USA and Tallinn, Estonia

Sergei Isupov is an Estonian-American sculptor internationally known for his highly detailed, narrative works. Isupov explores painterly figure-ground relationships, creating surreal sculptures with a complex artistic vocabulary that combines two- and three-dimensional narratives and animal/human hybrids. He works in ceramics using traditional hand-building and sculpting techniques to combine surface and form with narrative painting using colored stains highlighted with clear glaze.

Isupov has a long international resume with work included in numerous collections and exhibitions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Museum Angewandte in Kunst, Germany, and in the US at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, Everson Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Museum of Arts and Design, Museum of Fine Arts–Boston, Museum of Fine Arts–Houston, Mint Museum of Art, and Racine Art Museum. In 2017, his solo exhibition at The Erie Art Museum presented selected works in a 20-year career survey titled Hidden Messages, followed by Surreal Promenade e, another survey solo in 2019 at the Russian Museum of Art in Minnesota.