Abigail Newbold

Pleasant Ridge, MI

Residency: January-February 2011

Artist's Statement:

Sculpture Space afforded me the time to dig deep into my art practice in a way I haven’t had the concentrated time for in a few of years. Primarily I was interested in utilizing local resources to learn more about timber framing and post and beam structures. I met with local woodworkers who know traditional methods and got demonstrations on how beams are prepared with both traditional hand tools and power tools. I was able to connect with a curator of collections at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown where I studied their collection of wood, textile and farm implements. This is vital research that is going towards a much larger future project that I am currently seeking funding for.

In addition to my research I produced a new work that was shipped to Boston for an exhibition at the Society of Arts and Crafts titled – The Loom: On, Around and Through. I was able to complete another work for an upcoming exhibition in Knoxville, TN at Fluorescent Gallery titled HomeGrown, and execute a commissioned work that I’d had on hold.

In between projects I did extensive work to organize and archive at least eight years of portfolio images, refine artists statements and various formats of CV, and submitted as many as four or five applications for upcoming grants and residencies.

About the Artist:

Part collector, part craftsman, part designer, Abigail Newbold utilizes a domestic vocabulary to create objects and installations that examine issues of comfort, survival and portability. Born in Boston, she received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Arts with concentrations in both industrial design and fiber, and her MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Newbold, whose work has been published in both Dwell and American Craft, exhibits internationally and continues to collaborate on local design-build projects as well as fostering commissions for quilts, furniture, and furniture cozies. She has taught at the College for Creative Studies and the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Maine and currently works as the Exhibitions Preparator at The Cranbrook Art Museum. She is an inaugural recipient of a 2009 Kresge Artist Fellowship a program of The Kresge Foundation. This spring Newbold will participate in the first Art X Detroit; a biannual exhibition of two years of Kresge visual, literary, performing and musical fellows to be hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Newbold currently maintains a studio in Pleasant Ridge, MI.