On Sat­ur­day I went to an event in Down­town Bal­ti­more, C A R T. It was really great! The Cur­rent Gallery was trans­formed into a mini-super mar­ket, with every­thing in a small space for sale. There were small sculp­tures, draw­ings, zines, plushes, and more. I went with­out the intent to buy, to just admire, but couldn’t not buy this lovely item by Chiara Keeling-Gonzalez upon first sight:

Just hav­ing this object in my pos­ses­sion made me hap­pier– every time I glance at it, I am excited by the com­bi­na­tion of color, mate­r­ial, and shape. After look­ing at a bit more of Chiara’s work, it looks like this is how she has wanted to make me feel. (Her artist statement):

My prac­tice is to rede­fine mate­ri­als and strip them of orig­i­nal pur­pose and cul­tural sig­nif­i­cance, reduc­ing them to objects qua objects. Through the recal­i­bra­tion of these objects I intend to illicit pure aes­thetic seduc­tion. The objects avoid didac­ti­cism and social cri­tique, but my impulse is not anti-intellectual; rather, it is indif­fer­ent towards intel­lect. By pre­sent­ing stream­ers and bed­sheets with­out ori­gin, con­text, or func­tion, the work’s intent is to high­light their inher­ent beauty. They are feral forms, prac­ti­cal items that escape the domes­tic sphere. Wholly super­fi­cial and uncon­cerned with wit or place, they lean instead toward an exis­ten­tial hap­pi­ness, an emo­tional zone where the pieces’ essen­tial noth­ing­ness is in fact its con­tent. And, grouped together, the pieces play against each other, exhibit­ing an even stronger, more con­ge­nial empti­ness that defies both orig­i­nal and new milieux; they empha­size that an accu­mu­la­tion of every­thing is still nothing.

All images below via her web­site.