ON VIEW
In the USA, UK, and DENMARK
Ferrin Contemporary artists have been invited and commissioned to create site-specific works around the globe at private and public institutions.
Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), A Flowerbed for Alice is a collaborative sculpture made for Guldagergård, Skælskør Bygarden, Denmark.
Sergei Isupov | TREE SCULPTURES
On view permanently, Sergei’s Raku-fired tree figures are made to be installed and fitted to branches.
Sergei Isupov | FIRE SCULPTURES
PAST LOCATIONS:
2022 | “EARTH & FIRE” at TurnPark Art Space | West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, US
2017 | Fire Sculpture at Guldagergaard | Guldagergaard, Denmark
2016 | Fire Sculpture produced for Firefest at STARWorks | Star, North Carolina, US
A Fire Sculpture is a monumental piece of ceramic sculpture, built and fired on location.
The work begins with a performance, in which the sculptor and the fire are collaborative participants. The project climaxes with the opening of the tulip-like kiln while at peak temperature, with participation from the audience. The resulting sculpture remains in place, as a permanent relic of the performance.
Sergei works together with Andres Allik, a master kiln builder from Estonia in creating Fire Sculptures in various international locations.
In 2022, Kadri Pärnamets’ Choreography of Water was exhibited at Ferrin Contemporary in North Adams, MA. The solo exhibition cast the gallery in a sea of hand-built porcelain cups, vases, and cloud forms to explore earth’s most precious resource: water. Now in 2024, Kadri Pärnamets has returned to this idea of water through small-scale ceramic wave studies and her newest and largest endeavor to date: a 7+ foot fire sculpture. This fire sculpture was fired via “petal kiln”– a stand-alone, reusable kiln designed to open like flower petals – fabricated by friend and master kiln-maker, Andres Allik. The monumental work was crafted and unveiled in its final form at Guldagergaard’s Summer festival, Claytopia, in July, 2024. Having displayed a fire sculpture made by Kadri’s husband, Sergei Isupov, years prior, the Claytopia team approached Kadri in 2023 to commission one of her own. Normally working in porcelain, slip, and glaze on smaller scales, the fire sculpture differed greatly from Kadri’s past works. The sculpture was built using stoneware clay, which includes higher amounts of grog (raw, crushed materials containing silica and alumina), resulting in a more rough, textured medium. As it fired, the clay shrunk more than 10%, and any glazes applied to the clay body produced darker hues than when applied to porcelain. The changing and precarious nature of these materials added numerous unpredictable factors, which were only disclosed upon removal from the kiln. These factors directly connect to the larger ideas behind Kadri’s past work: testing life’s constant, unpredictable ups and downs and how we move through and with them. As Kadri contemplates this body of work and what it means to her, she considers the physical and figurative flows of energy and matter in her personal life, her creative process, and the greater push and pulls occurring in the world:
Courtney M. Leonard | BREACH: Logbook 23 | ROOT
2023 | Planting Field Foundation | 1395 Planting Fields Road, Oyster Bay, NY
Planting Fields Foundation is pleased to present the work of artist Courtney M. Leonard (b. Shinnecock, 1980) through BREACH: Logbook 23 | ROOT at Planting Fields.
BREACH: Logbook 23 | ROOT is a site-specific installation that addresses how the colonization of Long Island has impacted the culture of coastal Indigenous groups, particularly the Shinnecock Nation. ROOT features two main design themes – whales and root cellars. The shape of the shipping container structure itself is meant to evoke the body of a whale. As you enter through the jaws of a Northern Right Whale, you move through the whale’s body. Through these motifs, ROOT explores themes of food and cultural sovereignty, as well as ongoing ecological issues that endanger the Shinnecock Nation and our global waterways.
Public Art ON VIEW
At FERRIN CONTEMPORARY at Project Art
Visible from Main Street, Project Art displays multiple permanent public artworks by resident artists. Works are visible by car or foot, neighboring other temporary and permanent public works on Main Street as part of the Cummington Cultural District Art Walk.
MISS COMET
Sergei Isupov & Kadri Pärnamets
2022
mixed media, mosaic installation, made with ceramic shards
82 x 64 x 22″
The mosaic sculpture Miss Comet landed at Project Art in summer of 2022. Designed by Sergei Isupov, the 9′ sculpture was fabricated and completed in collaboration with artist Kadri Pärnamets. Now a permanent installation in front of their studio at Project Art on Main Street in Cummington, MA, the artists engaged with the local community throughout the process.
Miss Comet was proposed for Reflections, a grant funded public art project to create new works reflecting on the land and history of the area. Working in late spring of 2022, the couple received donations, excavated shard piles at nearby pottery studios, and produced fabricated elements to articulate the figure’s features. Throughout the process, unwanted, forgotten, chipped, broken plates and other treasures, including “mudsharked” river shards were left at the sculpture’s base to be incorporated. Donations came with tales of family histories, prior ownership, unfortunate demise or abandonment. Ceramic shards include fragments of work by Michael McCarthy, Paul Scott, Mark Shapiro, Eric Smith, Mara Superior, and Connie Talbot. Part archaeology, part commemoration, each object tells a story and provides an opportunity to reflect on the present and history in this small but deeply connected Western Massachusetts community.
EVERYTHING IS UPSIDE DOWN
Sergei Isupov
2024
repurposed maple tree, paint, wooden base
In Spring 2024, Sergei Isupov completed a carved wooden sculpture now on view at 54 Main Street. He was invited to use the trunk of a sugar maple tree left behind after the top half was removed due to storm damage in the winter of 2024. With an approved design presented to the Cummington Cultural District, Isupov was awarded an honorarium through the 2024 Arts Activation Project which partially funded the proposal. Work took place over three weeks engaging many members of the community as they watched the progress. When completed, volunteers from the community and additional support from CCD provided funds and equipment to remove the tree from its roots. It was re-installed on a newly fabricated base pedestal at Project Art. Now facing the street, it can be enjoyed by passers by along with other public art along Main Street.
BRANCH DRAGON
Sergei Isupov
2021
repurposed tree branch, styrofoam, paint
Next door from Project Art lives the Branch Dragon, a towering figure formed from a neighboring tree branch. Naturally curved with extended “arms”, the branch merely needed a head to come to life. Sculpted from styrofoam and embellished with paint, Sergei mounted the head and secured the branch body with 2 grounding posts. The sculpture is visible from Main Street in Cummington, MA.
CAT & MICE
Sergei Isupov
2021
repurposed tree branch, styrofoam, paint
Next door from Project Art lives the Branch Dragon, a towering figure formed from a neighboring tree branch. Naturally curved with extended “arms”, the branch merely needed a head to come to life. Sculpted from styrofoam and embellished with paint, Sergei mounted the head and secured the branch body with 2 grounding posts. The sculpture is visible from Main Street in Cummington, MA.