MAKE DO | Angela Conant + Kate Harding
SARDINE
APRIL 16 - MAY 1 2016

SARDINE is pleased to present a two-person show titled MAKE DO by artists Angela Conant and Kate Harding. The show opens with a reception from 6 to 9pm on Saturday, April 16 and runs through Sunday, May 1, 2016.

To MAKE suggests the manifestation of form. To DO is to carry out an action. To MAKE DO is to work with what is around. Observation, memory, economy and invention born of necessity serve the function of doing-what-one-can with what one has available. In the practices of Angela Conant and Kate Harding, both manifest actions into form, a site that considers the reach of the gesturing body and it’s less physical extensions. The objects shown at SARDINE are deictic to action, and could be considered portraits of impressions or movement. Conant’s displacement of dirt or sand by way of sunken fingertips freezes time into a humble monument to an ephemeral impression. Harding’s footfalls, mapping the wooded terrain, articulate a traversed “conversation” and become solid as space folded with time.

Contemporaries in their master’s studies, Conant and Harding did not uncover the similarities in their practices until invited to exhibit together at SARDINE. Through the collaborative process, they discovered parallels in their ways of working, and, more surprisingly, throughout the histories that formed each of their artistic and life perspectives. Though far flung from one another in Harding’s Missouri and Conant’s Vermont, each artist came to know the world in a rural setting, which has fostered remarkably sympathetic interests. In particular, both practices share a process of mining the wonder of the intangible. The works on view at SARDINE for MAKE DO translate an idea through multiple forms by articulating and re-articulating meaning.

4/4

Angela Conant:

Hi I'm in a cab now. But I was thinking about garment building in your work and that is more related I think to what I was describing in terms of the ways humans augment their relationship to the rest of the world in a way other entities do not

And there is a correlation between that language which is made of mark making in its formulation and the mules biting the trees

Also we should include something about a visualization of not-seen things

I'm thinking specifically of your footstep impact in the form of fabric folds and my hand gestures in sand cast - invisible actions made into positive form

Kate Harding:

Haha I love that you are in a can right now doing this

Angela Conant:

Yeah I don't feel cool

Kate Harding:

Yes that last part is very important to bring up

Haha but it's SO cool

Angela Conant:

Yes because the work we are actually putting in the show really does have a relationship

And I am having trouble distilling things down to that because we have had so much dialogue around other ideas that are also interesting but might not be in this show per se

Kate Harding:

Yep I agree so I think that'll be a point of specificity

Angela Conant:

Right

Kate Harding:

Totally

I think we have like 7 shows to do and a musical to produce but we don't have to put it all on this work just yet;)

Angela Conant:

Yeah it's a small space

Hahaha

I also have in my notes from our studio visit "accessing the ways we understand truth, not accessing the actual truth"

So there's that

Kate Harding:

So I'll focus in on our works' kinship that we're showing and talk a little about the Layered meaning of Make Do and see what I come up with...I'm very optimistic:)

Angela Conant:

Wonderful

Kate Harding:

Oh when did we say that? We are deep

Angela Conant:

Also you are good at this

Too bad we can't just print out our text exchange