Mary Champagne
MFA Fibers and Material Studies, Room 250F
“the sticking place,” 36” x 24” x 14” , steel, Spider-Tack, Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud
Champagne is concerned with collective fiction and the tenuous ways we rationalize our own identities and orientations. A weaver in many sensibilities, her practice prioritizes material transmutation both on and off the loom, often leveraging the ‘conditional’ properties of a material when met with a catalytic force like water, gravity, or magnetism. She views both the potential energy housed in these interactions and the residues they leave behind as where her work lives; in weaving terms she would call this space the ‘fell line.’ With deeply-rooted archival research drawing upon such varied interests as Major League Baseball, dowsing and divination rituals, and Japanese-American incarceration during WWII, the question driving her practice at the moment is: does it matter if something is ‘true,’ if its result is real?
Mary Champagne
Mary Champagne is materials-obsessed and currently based in Philadelphia, PA. She holds a BFA in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art with concentrations in Creative Writing and Printmaking.