maquette

Inspiration happens before we notice it. Have you ever stood before a finished work of art and found yourself less interested in the polished artifact in front of you than the various steps in the process required to get there? How many iterations are born and discarded before this final completed piece is ready to be displayed? Some would say, the discarded bones of a fish or the stock for a bouillabaisse, what’s the difference?

Typically, at one end of the creative process there is a disconnected pile of widgets while at the other end there is a shimmering artifact basking in the muted glow of halogen lights. But what we are interested in is the steps in between. The Maquettes project suspends the end to end process so that the rough sketches and models become the de facto finished product.

Here’s another way of looking at things: One sketch says hello to another sketch and just like that a rough draft is born. It’s in this place where we’ve decided to pause for a moment. We don’t stop here because we have some innate desire to illustrate the various steps in the art-making process; rather we want to ascribe a value to inspiration and spontaneity. That is to say, freshness and energy rather than polish and luster. Isotopes and polymers rather than mass-produced objects. Spindle and bobbin rather than glass display cases. Windowsills rather than free trade economic zones.

We’ve decided to linger in between these spaces, in the hopes of capturing the moment before the moment that art “happens”. Won’t you step in and join us?


- Craig Foltz