AMoCA Collection | Above the Clouds (RAiR Studio 4), 2020, Extruded polystyrene, wood, styrene plastic, joint compound, paint, acrylic rod, polymer clay, electrical tape, wire, aluminum flashing, LEDs, looping video on 32" monitor, 14" x 24" x 30"
RAIR | 2018-19
Erica Bailey | Bronx, NY
Erica Bailey is a Bronx-based visual artist whose foundations are in sculpture and whose current practice encompasses installation and video. Originally from a small-town, working-class family in Ohio, she earned her BFA from The Ohio State University in 2003 and her MFA from the University of Cincinnati in 2007. She has created several large-scale installations at Ohio institutions, most notably Telescoping House in 2010 for the UnMuseum of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center. She moved to New York in 2012 after accepting a position with The City College of New York, where she manages the sculpture facilities and teaches one class each semester. In 2015, she was included in the exhibition Bronx Calling: The Third AIM Biennial at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and had a solo exhibition, Its memory, the memory of its ribs, its knees, its shoulders,at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn. She participated in the inaugural BronxArtSpace Summer Residency in 2017 and in the LES Studio Program, a program of Artists Alliance, Inc., in the summer of 2018.
As an artist ‘tempted by space’, to borrow a phrase from sociologist Roger Caillois, space is of primary concern to me in my practice. In my installations, I exploit the visual and imaginative experience of diorama, often alongside the physical experience of a real or custom built space. The dioramas represent vernacular architecture and are often paired with video, sound, or still images suggesting the environs of each. Through the use of diorama, I am able to position, side-by-side, spaces that are disparate in terms of time and location, grouping them to articulate particular relationships between them. Nearly always empty, they are pure instances of space, uncluttered by the quotidian and suggestive of the transitory nature of life. I present them in ways that subvert expectations; their time, location, and sometimes even their spatial orientation is confused, fluid. In them and through their creation, I explore the strangeness I perceive in conscious existence and its entanglement with time and space.
http://ericabailey.net
Roswell Museum and Art Center
Rair exhibition • Erica Bailey "in the space of a breath", September 21-November 10, 2019
