Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, a verdant pocket at the end of Fabrication Street founded by Tamara Johnson and Trey Burns, welcomes the non-hierarchical art collective MATERIAL GIRLS. The core group of six female artists all bring intimacy to the site-responsive outdoor exhibition Desire Paths, on view through July 31. Spanning across the country, from LA to New York to Austin, the MATERIAL GIRLS promise an understanding of the ephemerality of time and how we relate to it in a space. The members are Cameron Cameron, Claire Lachow, Gracelee Lawrence, Rachael Starbuck, and Hilliary Gabryel.
Having been apart for the duration of the pandemic, coming together at Sweet Pass will be a heartwarming reunion for the group. Tamara Johnson says, “We have been planning this for so long and it is finally coming to fruition, and it feels so amazing.” Sweet Pass’ mission is to create ideas that exist in the gaps between many spaces, such as gardens and public spaces while advocating and supporting contemporary art. Desire Paths speaks to and sees many of these ideas, fostering ideas of community and intimacy.
Recognizing the distance between them, Starbuck recalls how the pandemic impacted the installation. “Thinking about proximity at the beginning of the pandemic, we spent a lot of time thinking about intimacy and touch and how to be close from a distance as a collective, so this is an interesting opportunity for us—communicating across the senses , and a desire for closeness,” she says.
Like a band with many instruments, MATERIALS GIRLS all bring a specific aspect of art to the installation, Cameron says. And, for Gabryel, coming together as sculptors highlights the unique experience, they each carry when creating installation-based work.
The installation pairs six custom benches with sound and text to create a desire path within the space. Each vignette acts as a node of individuality within the collective group, representing the many ways in which one can act, react, and exist within a space. Each bench is coupled with a mirror marked with a symbol tying together sight and sound. The intent is expounded on in the correlating zine by the MATERIAL GIRLS.
A warmly colored and interwoven rope weaves in and out of the sections in the exhibition, offering a sense of interconnectedness and opportunity for the viewer. “It’s sort of like an astral cord,” Trey Burns laughs, acknowledging the close-knit temporality of the group. The rope, according to Gabryel, is metaphorical for both the collective and the viewer. “It is an opportunity to have a physical relationship with the viewer while also tying back to the title of the exhibition, Desire Paths, and what that means for everyone, who is so individually different,” she says.
As the exhibition welcomes the viewer, it immediately invokes a path and inward thought. There is a connection between how the topography presents landscapes and how we, as bodies, trek them. “There is an interconnectedness in the exhibition, and we were able to do that in several different ways and make this spiderweb effect on how to experience this space,” Lawrence says. “There are so many layers that were developed in this time, and we get to let those things blossom now.”
Playful yet emblematic, the rope and the accompanying pieces in the installation beckon the viewer to explore their intimate relationship with the landscape of the space. Starbuck wants the viewer to experience rather than see the work, following and rejecting the “worn paths made by the landscape architect.” She says, “You see worn paths in grass, and eventually enough people will take that path. The exhibition is such a beautiful metaphor for this collective decision to just forge your own way.”
For Lachow, the rope acts as an invitation, and one that allows for the installation to act as a mobile space for the viewer. “Having sort of a line drawn without any specific purpose lets people bring whatever they will, it’s a provocation without any particular intention, yet it will guide in one way or another,” she says.
The vast and open nature of Sweet Pass also contributes to the installation as it examines space and logic with its lush landscape juxtaposing sculpture and image. “That is what Sweet Pass is, too. At the end of the street is a grassy pocket that just kind of appears, and often visitors say, ‘What am I supposed to do here?’” says Johnson. “This suggestion of a path is based on your emotional read. It also addresses where you’re coming, and that moment, that day, that temperature—it’s open-ended.”
As many roads and flights lead to Dallas, Starbuck, who is in Austin, says it is an incredible opportunity to rethink her own work as well as that of her co-members. “We are communicating across the senses, and there is this desire for closeness. We came up with the idea to take advantage of the park and make these individual islands, and be in a space together and be with the art, and yet have a sense of one another individually,” she says. “It’s been a roller coaster on how to navigate space. This show develops the theme of navigation, and how we find our way through space.” – By Kit Freeman