chashama is pleased to announce Old and New an installation by Courtney Puckett. On the Andean island in Lake Titicaca, residents weave houses and public buildings out of lake reed. This month at chashama’s 266 window gallery, Puckett creates another world of public and private space weaving, stitching, wrapping, and knotting sculptures from what she finds scouring thrift stores and the closets of friends—old clothes, used towels, bed sheets—the lake reed of Brooklyn.

Bookending Fashion Week and located in the garment district among the window displays of colors, patterns, and textures, Puckett’s installation speaks to a historic use of unconventional materials, craft techniques typically associated with women’s work, and the more recent challenge to the definition of sculpture. Puckett’s world is full of curious creatures and objects reminiscent of function but inevitably abstract relics, much like the process-oriented abstractions of Eva Hess or the whimsical objects of Claus Oldenburg.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Courtney Puckett, 30, received a BFA in Painting in 2002 from Maryland Institute College of Art and attended the Center for Art and Culture in Aix-en-Provence, France. She received a MFA from Hunter College in 2007 and attended the Glasgow School of Art. Puckett has been an Artist-In-Residence at Vermont Studio Center and at Buffalo National River in Arkansas. Recently, her work has been included in group exhibitions at Denise Bibro’s Platform Space in New York, Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, D.U.M.B.O. Art Center’s Art Under the Bridge Festival in Brooklyn and at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and covered by the New York Times art blog. In 2008, she curated the exhibition Yellow in Chelsea, New York. In 2010 Puckett will have solo exhibitions at Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn and at Valencia Community College in Florida