Courtney Stock

MFA ’17 Fine Arts 2D

Weaving is an ancient technology that has evolved in tandem with humanity itself. The mechanism of weaving is like a document or diagram of human histories, with major threads running throughout, others overlapping, interconnected, comprising a tapestry of stories, experiences, innovations, and perspectives. Weaving’s origins as a textile production technique have persevered while the methodology has also spawned huge advances in technoculture, with the Jacquard loom as the first computer, and unders and overs as the precursor to zeros and ones. This concept of opposing duality – ‘either / or’ not ‘both / and’ – is a metaphorically rich ground for rumination on our increasingly polarized society. By creating work that utilizes weaving, I am interested in fostering connection with the continuum of human history and of the multitude of decisions that ultimately comprise a life. For my woven works, I prepare varied surfaces with paint with an exploratory and experimental approach. These surfaces are cut into strips and woven back together in a process of creation, destruction, and transformation. I cultivate variation in transparency, opacity, color, and texture, positioning the material as content and process as subject. Through my intuitive and process-oriented approach, I seek to queer the grid, subvert notions of craft, and resist over-intellectualization of abstraction.



Courtney Stock (B. 1987, Malden, MA) lives and works in Boston, MA. Her work has been featured in recent solo and group exhibitions, including at New Art Center, Newton, MA; 301 Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA; Forsberg Art Gallery, Longview, WA; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Stock is the Founder and a Co-Director of BOSSCRITT, a critique and curatorial club for emerging artists, which was awarded the 2021 Collective Futures Fund Ongoing Platforms grant from Tufts University and the Andy Warhol Foundation.

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