curated by Comma
I’m Never Coming Home (INCH) is the project of collaborative team Judy Rushin-Knopf and Carolyn Henne with artists Barbara Weissberger, Eleanor Aldrich, Kelly Lorraine Hendrickson, and poet Erin Belieu. It revolves around the idea of a “go box” and examines doomsday preppers as a cultural phenomenon and niche consumer market. Working with a genuine aim to understand them rather than to derise, the six collaborators asked “what does it mean to survive a dystopia?” I’m Never Coming Home was produced in 2019, but due to the pandemic, its release was delayed until now.
In shedspace, visitors will see the contents of the INCH CommaBox. whitespec features a group exhibition organized by Rushin-Knopf and Henne that features works from the collaborators’ individual studio practices.
ABOUT COMMA
Comma is interested in small art objects that carry big narrative potential. Founded in 2016 by artists Judy Rushin-Knopf and Carolyn Henne as an experiment in making art accessible and portable, Comma is a miniature group exhibition in a box. The objects are small enough to fit into the palm of your hand and each one’s meaning is contextualized by the other objects in the collection. Comma serves as a portal through which to consider current ideas and rethink the familiar, seeking to stimulate conversations about the varied and changing cultural landscape. It gives voice to artists in traditional venues, but also in taverns, homes, parks, and libraries across America, where people can respond to artworks in a relaxed way. Each volume’s theme is decided upon together by invited artists working with Rushin-Knopf and Henne. Taking a cue from record albums and artist’s books, Commas art boxes are available in singles, standard, and deluxe editions.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Eleanor Aldrich was born in Springerville, Arizona. A participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, she also holds an MFA in Painting & Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she currently lives. She earned her BFA in Painting & Drawing through the Academie Minerva (Groningen, Netherlands) and Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. She was a participant in the Drawing Center’s first Open Sessions.
Aldrich has had solo shows in Boston, Nashville, Knoxville, Flagstaff, AZ, and at the University of Alabama. Her work has been shown at Saltworks Gallery and whitespace (Atlanta, GA), 1708 Gallery (Richmond, VA), the Drawing Center (New York, NY), Grin (Providence, RI), and Ortega y Gasset (New York, NY). She was been awarded an Endowment for the Arts through the Whiteman Foundation and the Herman E. Spivey Fellowship. Her work has been included in New American Paintings and reviewed in Art in America and on Artforum.com.
Erin Belieu was born and raised in Nebraska and educated at the University of Nebraska, Ohio State University, and Boston University. She is the author of Infanta, winner of the National Poetry Series in 1994, One Above & One Below, winner of the Midlands Poetry Prize and Ohioana Poetry Award, and Black Box, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, all of which were published by Copper Canyon. Her poems have appeared in places such as Best American Poetry, The New York Times, and Atlantic Monthly. Belieu co-founded VIDA: Women in Literary Arts with poet Cate Marvin.
Belieu’s fourth collection, Slant Six, is an inundation of the humor and horror of contemporary American Life—from the last saltline cracked in the sleeve, to the kitty-cat calendar in an office cubicle. With its prophecies of impending destruction, and a simultaneous flood of respect for Americans, Belieu’s poems close like Ziploc bags around a human heart. Slant Six was honored as one of “10 Favorite Books of 2014″—Dwight Garner, The New York Times and as a “Standout Book of 2014″—American Poet magazine.
Kelly Lorraine Hendrickson is a sculptor and printmaker living and working in Tallahassee, Florida. She has shown work nationally and internationally. She is the Art Preparator at Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts. She also teaches typography and printmaking at FSU and ceramics and drawing at The Lafayette Art Center. She is a co-founder and director of Tallahassee’s Zine Festival. Hendrickson’s practice utilizes a variety of media to make work that involves everyday experience, art history, and the internet.
Carolyn Henne is a sculptor. Henne’s sculpture is largely informed by anatomical studies and her interest in low-tech interactive works. Her work ranges from large, complex interactive installations to more straightforward, discrete objects. She has shown her work in solo and two-person shows in Nashville, Tennessee; Richmond and Staunton, Virginia; Berlin, Germany; Doha, Qatar; Washington, D.C.; Bronx, New York; and, more recently, on a sandbar in Beaufort, North Carolina. Her work has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, New Art Examiner, Gulf Times (Qatar), Washington Post, The New York Times, and El Peruano (Peru). Henne collaborates with Judy Rushin-Knopf on their project Comma, and she is recently retired from FSU’s Department of Art.
Judy Rushin-Knopf’s research is a hybrid of painting, textiles, and sculpture exploring issues of identity, agency, labor, and human engagement with the physical world. Recent exhibitions include University of Kentucky Art Museum (Lexington), The Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota), Center for Contemporary Art in New Orleans, Ivy Brown Gallery (NYC), Unrequited Leisure (Nashville), and C for Courtside (Knoxville). She is a residency fellow of Mass MoCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, ThreeWalls, and Hambidge. Her work was recently featured in the international contemporary textile publication Arte Morbida and was acquired by the UK Art Museum. Rushin-Knopf lives in Tallahassee and is on the faculty at Florida State University. She is represented by Ivy Brown Gallery in New York.
Barbara Weissberger was born in New Jersey, lived in San Francisco and New York before moving to Pittsburgh where she currently lives. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous national and international residencies including MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, VCCA, Camargo, and Bogliasco, and participated in the Drawing Center’s Open Sessions. Her work has been shown at such venues as The Silver Eye Center for Photography (Pittsburgh, PA), PS1/MoMA (Queens, NY), Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center (Buffalo, NY), The Drawing Center (NYC, NY), The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, PA), ADA Gallery (Richmond, VA), and The Missoula Art Museum (Missoula, MT). She has collaborated with artists from a range of disciplines including choreographer Stacee Pearl, composer Eric Moe, and works in an ongoing collaboration with visual artist Eleanor Aldrich as ALDRICH+WEISSBERGER. She is on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. Her improvisational photographs, photo quilts, and soft sculptures are concerned with bodies, perception, and sensation.