January 26, 2010
Homespun Brooklyn
chashama presents Courtney Puckett’s Old and New

What: Old and New, an installation by Courtney Puckett
Where: chashama’s window gallery, 266 West 37th St. (between 7th & 8th Aves)
When: Installation on view, February 5th – 21st, 10:00am – 6:00pm; Opening Reception February 5th 6:00pm – 9:00 pm; Gallery open February 6th and 13th, 12:00pm – 6:00pm; Closing Reception February 19th 6:00pm – 9:00pm; Also by appointment
Directions: A, C, E, 1, 2, 3 to 34th Street or to 42nd Street (use 40th Street exit); M16, M34 to 8th Ave; M10, M20 to 36th Street
For more information visit www.chashama.org
Free and open to the public

This project is funded in part through the National Endowment for the Arts

NEW YORK, NY- chashama is pleased to announce Old and New an installation by Courtney Puckett.  On the Andean island in Lake Titicaca, residents weave houses and public buildings out of lake reed. This month at chashama's 266 window gallery, Puckett creates another world of public and private space weaving, stitching, wrapping, and knotting sculptures from what she finds scouring thrift stores and the closets of friends—old clothes, used towels, bed sheets—the lake reed of Brooklyn.

Bookending Fashion Week and located in the garment district among the window displays of colors, patterns, and textures, Puckett’s installation speaks to a historic use of unconventional materials, craft techniques typically associated with women’s work, and the more recent challenge to the definition of sculpture. Puckett’s world is full of curious creatures and objects reminiscent of function but inevitably abstract relics, much like the process-oriented abstractions of Eva Hess or the whimsical objects of Claus Oldenburg.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Courtney Puckett, 30, received a BFA in Painting in 2002 from Maryland Institute College of Art and attended the Center for Art and Culture in Aix-en-Provence, France. She received a MFA from Hunter College in 2007 and attended the Glasgow School of Art. Puckett has been an Artist-In-Residence at Vermont Studio Center and at Buffalo National River in Arkansas. Recently, her work has been included in group exhibitions at Denise Bibro’s Platform Space in New York, Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, D.U.M.B.O. Art Center’s Art Under the Bridge Festival in Brooklyn and at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and covered by the New York Times art blog. In 2008, she curated the exhibition Yellow in Chelsea, New York. In 2010 Puckett will have solo exhibitions at Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn and at Valencia Community College in Florida

ABOUT CHASHAMA

chashama is a NYC arts organization whose mission is to support artists of all genres. chashama adopts vacant properties that are donated by their owners and converts them into theatres, galleries, studios, and window performance sites; chashama then re-grants this space to artists. Since 1995, chashama has transformed more than 50 vacant properties and has given more than 7,500 artists access to space. Our programs are made possible by the generous support of: the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York City Council, Carnegie Corporation, Dramatist Guild Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Tides Foundation and through private donations from individuals.