STOREFRONT is please to announce String Theory, an exhibition that features the work of five artists notably working in fabric, string, and yarn. The exhibition presents a variety of approaches including conceptual, feminist, process, and installation. The exhibit features installations by Theresa Hackett, Elana Herzog, Brece Honeycutt, Ellie Murphy and Drew Shiflett.

Theresa Hackett’s Thread Drawings From 1991 are influenced by Lucio Fontana and his use of obsessively punctured wood. Rough and animated, these framed “drawings” are made from pieces of Italian paper stitched together with a sewing machine. Theresa Hackett has had several one-person shows in New York and has shown widely throughout the United States and Europe. Her work has been included in the Weatherspoon Art Museum 40th Anniversary Art on Paper. She is a recipient of 2009 NYFA grant and a Fountainhead residency in Miami, Florida.

Elana Herzog is best known for installations in which textiles are aggressively staples to wall surfaces and then deconstructed to produce residual drawings that consist of metal staples, shredded fabric and perforated gypsum. Elana Herzog lives and works in New York City, where she is represented by Lmak Projects. Her first solo show at Lmak will be in March 2011. Upcoming group shows include The Jewel Thief, at the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York, and Art on Paper 2010 at the Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina. Herzog has a BA from Bennington College and an MFA from Alfred University. She is the recipient of the 2009 Anonymous Was A Woman Award, and the 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award.

Brece Honeycutt makes history-based drawings, sculptures and installations. Her installations have been placed in exterior locations including university campuses, historical houses, non-profit spaces, inner-city parks and in office buildings, museums and galleries. She collaborates and works with the National Park Service, students, historians, gardeners, non-profit organizations, poets, dancers, interpreters, government departments, libraries and senior centers. Honeycutt received an undergraduate degree in Art History from Skidmore College and a Master’s degree in sculpture from Columbia University. Her work has recently been exhibited at Lesley Heller Workspace, New York, and at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY. She works with NorteMaar, Brooklyn, NY, and Susan Conway Gallery, Santa Fe, NM. She lives in Sheffield, MA and New York, NY.

Ellie Murphy began making large yarn sculptures after having a child and moving into a house. The work is about the relationship between personal, domestic and cultural nostalgia. She combines references to doll hair, crafts, folk motifs and Americana from her 1970’s childhood in Kansas with aspects of modern, conceptual, multicultural and feminist art. She sees interdependence between the multiplicities of cultures in our world and uses the process of braiding as a way of playing with the unintended and humorous connections between them. Murphy has a BFA in sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from Yale University. Most recently her work has been shown at the Usdan Gallery, Bennington College, Vermont; Artists Curated Projects, Los Angeles, California; and at Privateer Gallery, Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Drew Shiflett refers to her work as constructed drawings or compressed sculptures. In her recent body of work there is an emphasis on drawing, but the pieces are a combination of drawing, relief and sculpture. Her work is abstract while referencing architecture and textiles, and it is the result of a cumulative process of layering and building linear and planar forms. A woven, translucent effect is created through the use of handmade papers, pencil and ink lines, watercolor wash and conte crayon. Shiflett received her MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting at The Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, MD. She is represented by Lesley Heller Workspace in New York City and The Drawing Room in East Hampton, NY, and is currently preparing for a solo exhibition in 2011 at the Guild Hall Museum of East Hampton. She is the recipient of two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships—Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts (2009) and Sculpture (1990). She also received the Mid Atlantic/NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship in Sculpture (1993) and a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Sculpture (1992).

Also on exhibit in the back room:

Black and White: new work by Vincent Contarino, Jeri Coppola, and Hilda Shen