Aldwyth: Work v. / Work n.
Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, 2009. Hardcover. 112 pages. White cloth with title in black to spine and title and illustration to front cover. Illustrated endpapers. Color photos of the Works throughout. Essays by Mark Sloan and Rosamond Purcell.
VG- A square, firm instance. Light waterspotting to back cover cloth and dust jacket. Slightest warbling to the ending roughly one-third of pages. Free of all markings.
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This catalog documents the first major retrospective of collage and assemblage artist Aldwyth. For more than two decades, Aldwyth has produced her art in relative seclusion from the larger art world. Now seventy-three, she lives and works in an octagonal house on the edge of a salt marsh on one of South Carolina's sea islands, where she creates
astonishingly complex collages and assemblages that recall the fantastical intricacies of Hieronymus Bosch. The exhibition subtitle, Work v. / Work n., is intended to illuminate the idea that work is both a verb and a noun, and highlights the word's alternate definitions. This focus is indicative of the artist's desire for her art to be appreciated both as an object of art and a representation of the effort required to create it. "Work is what all art has in common," Aldwyth says.
