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Nicole Cassidy – Laundry
January 16 - February 16
Tuesday, January 16 – Friday, February 16, 2024
Gallery Hours: 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. MT
Reception: Tuesday, February 6, 2024, 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. MT
Rude Gallery
Join the RMCAD community in welcoming the exhibition ‘Laundry’ by Fine Arts student Nicole Cassidy! The exhibition will be on view from Monday, January 16 – Friday, February 16 in the Rude Gallery on campus. Stop by the Rude Gallery on Tuesday, February 6, for the show’s reception alongside Catherine Haggarty’s VASD artist talk and the opening of the Catherine Haggarty + Esteban Cabeza de Baca exhibitions in the Philip J. Steele gallery.
More from the artist:
“Writing a letter each day to my late Grandmother, Laundry accumulates the burden of the passage of time during grieving: questions that go unasked and unanswered, sentiments that were never fully communicated, and memories that are impossible to grasp. Loss is unavoidable, grief is unavoidable but through my daily act of writing to my grandmother I seek to hold onto the tendrils of our relationship. Laundry is my own attempt to record time through the lens of a lost relationship. Can a relationship continue after the other half is lost?
The multitude of shellacked fabrics is an archive of living. I utilized worn pillow cases, garments, and sheets that were torn down to the size of a 6” x 9” postcard, adorned with postage and addressed to the home where our relationship mainly lived. Fabrics instill comfort and protection from the cold. Through combining the daily letters to these fabrics, my care for my Grandmother is married to my physical manifestation of comfort.
After carefully assembling each letter, I hang them to dry on a clothesline so that they are free to take on their own organic shape. The incorporation of the beeswax coated fabrics hung to mimic a clothesline is a metaphor for the preservation of our relationship. The components that mainly comprise the deepest relationships are mundane activities, laundry being one that I shared with my Grandmother. Now that she is gone, I continue to hang laundry alongside her spirit.”
