Artist Snapshot: Maggie Haas (Part 2 of 2)

On the eve of Auntie Em's Mobile Home, we caught up with Haas to talk a little more about the exhibition. 

What did you want to capture with the Auntie Em's Mobile Home project? 

Paul Hopkin, the curator at Slow, titled the project after we'd been making work for a while.  I am based in San Francisco, and for a number of reasons I wanted to play with working small and portable.  It's partly just a matter of practicality for an out-of-town show, but I'm also considering the ways I use and consume materials in for an art practice.  I make sculpture, and a lot of my work has to do with the uneasiness and fragility of built environments and domestic space.  Care and upkeep of spaces, like homes, possessions, etc. gets folded into that and sometimes it occurs to me that my own practice produces quite a bit of superfluous-feeling material.  Not that art isn't important, but in terms of resources it doesn't tread lightly.  So I wanted to see if smallness could produce some efficiency and at the same time, a sense of care and intimacy.

What do you hope people will get out of coming to the exhibition? 

That's partly summed up in wanting to created that intimacy I just talked about, but what I'm most excited about is how the decisions of Paul Hopkin, the curator, will inform a viewer's perceptions.  That's something I'm looking forward to experiencing myself.

Did you work directly with TJ Proechel or was it more of an individual effort? 

I've never met TJ and it's really exciting to be paired up by a third person, Paul Hopkin, for this show.  Paul made the curatorial decision to show us together, and drew some conceptual connections ahead of time.  Once we planned out some initial things, I've been left to work as independently as I like.  But TJ's work is concerned, via photography, with some of the same strange formal moments that fascinate me.  


Don't forget to check out the Opening Reception of Auntie Em's Mobile Home from 6-9 PM TOMORROW!  


Amanda B. 

Artist Snapshot: Maggie Haas (Part 1 of 2)

Based in San Francisco, artist Maggie Haas is looking forward to a weekend in Chicago for Auntie Em's Mobile Home, an exhibition showcasing her new works that capture the "uneasiness and fragility of built environments and domestic space." 

Teaming up with photographer TJ Proechel and curator Paul Hopkins, the exhibition will take place on Saturday, February 25th at SLOW, 2153 W 21st Street, Chicago 60608. 

Artist Maggie Haas

The Pilsen Project caught up with Haas to discuss her art and the upcoming exhibition. 

When did you first get involved with the art world? 

I was very lucky to have enjoyed painting as a kid and to never have been discouraged.  I grew up in a community where a lot of my friends' parents were craftspeople. In that way, it's like it's something I just fell into.  But I studied at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and that experience was what put me on the path I'm on.  I loved having peers who were experimenting with things they felt deeply about, succeeding and failing and trying again, and I loved the honesty of critique.  But most of all I like making things with my hands.  None of that has changed, even as I grow older and my interests evolve.  

What is your preferred medium? 

Nothing beats the directness of putting a brush to paper, but I use a lot of different materials.  What they have in common is that for the most part they're materials most of us have some direct, tactile experience of using.  Wood, pins, pencil, drywall and paint are all built, quite literally, into our daily lives.  I'm interested in objects and materials that can draw on that physical familiarly, even if they echo it in strange ways.

Young Ones - Haas, 2009

How would you describe your work? 

I hope it feels familiar.  A lot of the forms I draw and sculpt are rooted in common building and craft materials and techniques, from things that feel super-handmade, like quilts, to industrial things like wood pallets.  Either way, I'm most interested in how they become something more what they are intended to be: the formalities of lumber sizes, the way a textile pattern, seen in the right way, looks like an Agnes Martin painting or a blueprint or both.

Installation View - Haas, 2010

Amanda B.