ISOLATIONROOM/GALLERYKIT
"it is not a pipe"
Ann Hamilton from the collection of (curated by) Buzz Spector

October 6 - November 3, 2011

Dear Dana, In July 1992 I received a package in the mail from Ann Hamilton. Inside was a small,  slipcast porcelain, match holder; a “grandmother’s house”-type object in the form of a pipe resting on the pages of an opened book. The match holder was encased in a wad of newspaper, beneath which was a letter to me. The sentiments in this missive were of a personal nature, typical of those exchanged between friends, but Ann had done something more here, gluing little shards of glass to each word. So, the object in the form of a pipe, which was not one, was accompanied by a letter which was something more than a message. For nineteen years this letter has been kept with my mail; the match holder on a shelf in my studio. By now moving them from my private life to this public space I have isolated them for other kinds of scrutiny.

 

All best, Buzz


Dear Dana and Daniel, I just sent you an image of the match holder that figures as the motivation for sending the letter-as-objet d’art I received from Ann Hamilton in 1992. The photograph shows the match holder resting in the palm of a handmade paper hand—made during Ann’s St. Louis residency last year in preparation for her installation,stylus, at the Pulitzer. Ann painted this hand purple while deciding on the color scheme for the 1300+ paper hands she ultimately included in that installation. What made that hand unsuitable for stylus did not disqualify it from becoming a gift artifact, and in that transformed status it serves well as the “holder” of the match holder.

 

The “catalog” Ann refers to in the letter is Ann Hamilton: São Paulo – Seattle, published by the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, in 1992, to accompany accountings, the U.S. adaptation of Ann’s São Paulo Bienal installation, parallel lines,  the year before.

 

The glass bits Ann glued to the letter are called “cullet”; pieces of  waste glass she’d picked up from the floor of the hot shop at Pilchuck Glass School. Ann had just finished an artist residency at Pilchuck, at which I’d joined her a week earlier, to make glass plate prints in the Pilchuck cold shop.

 

The title of this project is “it is not a pipe,” the phrase taken from Ann’s letter, but of course also a Magrittean trope. In this case, neither the object, nor the letter, nor this exhibit project, are quite what they seem.

 

Thank you for giving me space in which to act ivate, Buzz

 


Buzz Spector is an artist and critical writer whose artwork has shown in such museums as the Art Institute of Chicago; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; and the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh. Spector’s received recent recognition with a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts` Fellowship. He is Dean of the College and Graduate School of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Spector is represented by Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis.


Ann Hamilton received her MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 1985 and her BFA from the University of Kansas, Lawrence in 1979. Hamilton represented the United States at the 48th Venice Biennale. A selection of her museum exhibitions include the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, Liverpool; the Carnegie International of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis.