Michelle Forsyth
Mid-Career Artist Residency
2019-20
Nick Novak Fellowship Residency Recipient
While not technically considered a printmaker, Michelle Forsyth employs a wide range of copying in her practice and calls attention to the nature of the multiple. Her current work consists of photographic prints depicting hand-crafted items such as screenprints, lithographs, paintings, weavings, and sculptures. These items are copies of things that are dear to her and she outlines those sentiments in text passages that accompany her work when exhibited.
The work she will complete at Open Studio will follow along this trajectory but will more specifically address the self, performing in the home, and the body in relation to illness and disability. Forsyth will complete a series of six life-sized self-portraits. Each work will focus on repeat patterns, printed on fabric and on paper-mâché forms. The textiles will be sewn into tight-fitting garments and the sculptural forms will be made to wear as jewelry or accessories. Ultimately this work will be reproduced as digitally-printed self-portraits. In the finished works, the printed matter will be predominant.
Inspired by the figures captured in interior decorating and lifestyle magazines, the work will picture her body interacting within her home. Here the body will uncover her struggle to perform once mundane tasks. Ultimately the work will be performance-based. Here her body, with all its renewed achievements, will seem beautiful, transcendent, and effervescent through the exploration of the qualities of movement that are unique to it.