Marin Abell

Marin Abell

Newport News, Virginia

Marin Abell’s sculptural events fold traditional materials (such as clay, ink, and fabric) and aesthetic values (such as scale) into innovative zones. At times he incorporates his physical body into his work to discover its pliability in the face of conditioning and constraints imposed by society, and to ascertain the limits of his own self control. He often works collaboratively to allow his creative process to unfold into unforeseen territories, and thus create new meanings. Marin received his BFA in Sculpture from James Madison University, and his MFA in Sculpture & Expanded Practice from Ohio University. He is currently teaching at the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design, and he has also taught elementary and middle school students at Tandem Friends School in Charlottesville, VA. He served as the Director of Outreach at Spiro Arts Artist Residency and Workshop Center in Park City, UT, where he was able to implement the after-school art program ArtSpark into the local elementary schools. He has received full fellowships at the following: Sculpture Space, Utica, NY; The Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass, CO; the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; and Spiro Arts, Park City, UT. Marin was an artist-mentor at the Kimball Art Center’s RELEVANT2010 in Park City, UT, and he is currently a Smack Mellon 2011 Hot Pick. He has exhibited at a variety of locations such as the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach; the Kayo Gallery, Salt Lake City; with the artist-group Spurse at the Creative Ingenuity Festival, Cleveland; and with Ohio University’s Aesthetic Technologies Lab in conjunction with ISEA (International Symposium for Electronic Art), San Jose.

Marin’s work can be viewed at: http://www.marinabell.org

Blue Sky Insight

I’ve always been drawn to the process of collaboration and have found that working in partnership stretches and extends my work. Throughout the years, I’ve discovered that it’s working collectively that is most responsible for moving my work into unforeseen territories, and that as my art evolves, my concept of what it means to collaborate has expanded. Happily, this trend has continued with my participation in the Blue Sky Project.

For example, in graduate school I teamed with a fellow student to video a small-scale radio zip line project that mapped sound traveling through a mini ravine near campus. It was only in nourishing a continued partnership that our fledgling pilot expanded beyond the university and into a project that created auditory maps of bold topographies such as canyons of Moab and ridges of the Rocky Mountains. Gradually, my notion of collaboration expanded from working with a single colleague, or with a band of apprentices under the direction of a grant recipient, to incorporating interactions with members of the community. For example, my Sculpture Space residency afforded me the opportunity to allow local bystanders to play soft hand-sculpted porcelain keys until they were fused together, a major phase in personalizing the metaphor of “letting go,” which was central to making my piece meaningful.

Now, Blue Sky Project has created the conditions for taking collaboration to yet another level, and to do it with a sense of play, through work on The Exquisite Corpse Wigs.  Through interactions with the community, work with fellow resident artists, and most importantly through joining forces with the teen participants, Blue Sky has led my group and myself to a renewed as well as greater appreciation for the power of the collective in the creative process.

The Exquisite Corpse is a Surrealist technique in which images are created by participants who are unaware of how other compositions will look, and the composite drawing forms a hybrid ‘body.’ In multiple iterations, our group applied this technique to the construction of three-dimensional wigs, and in the process induced new forms of social interaction. Specifically, the group divided wig construction into thirds, with each member being blind to the work of his/her peers to allow for surprise in our creative practice. The project, ultimately named “The Rats Nest,” incorporated adventures into the community to generate social interactions and to identify ways in which community members’ contributions can substantially morph what group members may have felt was a final product.

While at Blue Sky, I’ve realized that an important aspect of collaboration included taking the initiative to obtain resources (other than money) from the local community. The Rat’s Nest utilized low-tech studio materials such as Styrofoam, fabrics, cardboard, as well as natural and found materials. As a group, we found that by being able to clearly articulate our initiative and by boldly asking for support, we received the resources that were critical to making our project robust. For example, our group was able to obtain foam, our chief material, from the Global Foam Company, free of charge. The Key Bank building generously lent us prime exhibition space at its downtown plaza. Art groups such as Dayton Circus, as well as Art Street, generously donated time and space to our efforts. All Sports Barber Shop and Jesse’s Barber Shop contributed their expertise in the art of hair styling in a way that we were able to immediately apply to our wig designs. The group’s initiative to seek community support, combined with clearly explaining our vision and the resources we needed to make the Rat’s Nest a reality, are life lessons that our collaborative band will carry with us and apply.

Title: Radio Zipline

Dimensions: Variable | Photo-documentation of a sculptural event | 2010

Description: This is a collaborative project with Nate Lareau in which, in multiple iterations, we explore the effect of the landscape on sound by sending a bullhorn, playing at full volume, down this zipline from one location to another as a way to use sound to define those places, and collectively generate an acoustic map of the landscape.