Morgan Lehman Gallery is pleased to present “How to Build a Fire,” Carly Glovinski’s first solo exhibition in New York City. The show’s title refers to the “log cabin” technique of creating a fire by stacking alternating wood sticks in pairs and igniting them to stay warm. This piled wood architecture becomes an important structuring device that informs much of the creative process in the artist’s latest body of work. The image of a homemade fire also has symbolic resonance, evoking narratives of survival, comfort, nature, recreation, and community.
Rooted in observation, Glovinski’s practice is inspired by an astute curiosity about the patterns, icons and organizing mechanisms of the everyday world. Employing trompe l’oeil and methodical craft techniques, Glovinski aims to bend our perceptions of the things we recognize and take at face value, allowing for unexpected connections to be made between the materiality and iconography of objects.
These recent drawings, wall-hangings, and sculptures consider the organizing systems inherent in woven textiles, rugs, and stacks of wood, as well as the narrative symbolism embedded in quilting patterns, and are often the result of the accumulation of simple repeated gestures. Working from a studio located in a historical New England textile mill, Glovinski makes a direct connection to that past, and by employing craft in a manner that is self-aware of its history, she acknowledges its transcendence from decoration to language and invites the creation of new meaning.