Jen Bervin and A Published Event (Margaret Woodward and Justy Phillips)
KINDNESS (2019)
Graphite Rubbing on Kozo Rice paper. Dimensions1900mmx 460mm.
KINDNESS (2019) was made during a field trip by the artists in search of 36 glacial erratic boulders, known as Babson’s Boulders, on Dogtown Common, Massachusetts, in Fall 2019. During the great depression Roger Babson (1875-1967) commissioned unemployed Finnish Stonecutters to carve inspirational words into large glacial erratic boulders strewn across an area now covered by woodland. Babson was a businessman, notable for predicting the Wall Street crash, referred to his commissioning of these inscriptions as “writing my final and permanent book.” Strangely portentous and relevant for current economic and global circumstances, this work holds the friction of human and geological bodies, and brings into question languages and ‘publications’ that bridge human and lithic bodies.
Jen Bervin is a poet and visual artist whose multidisciplinary work results from research and collaboration with artists and specialists ranging from literary scholars to material scientists to activate the intersections of art and scholarship, text and textiles, science, technology and craft in works that range from poems written nanoscale to large scale museum installations. Jen lives in Guilford Connecticut.
Artists Justy Phillips and Margaret Woodward, (artist duo, A Published Event) make long-term relational artworks through shared acts of public telling. Exploring chance encounter, constructed situations and the shared authorship of lived experience, we work with language, ideas and publishing. At its heart, A Published Event is a raw, social practice that explores the possibilities of ‘slow-publishing’. We place a high value on collaboration, developing long-term relationships with a wide range of artists and writers.
