Chloe Wilwerding
Chloe Wilwerding is a mountain-loving, book-devouring, community-oriented mixed-media artist. She holds her MFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design (2019) and her BA in Political Science and Studio Art from Middlebury College (2015). She has been awarded residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Taleamor Park, and scholarships from Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency and Anderson Ranch Arts Center. She teaches for Rhode Island School of Design’s Continuing Education program and has worked as a faculty member at Montserrat College of Art.
Recent exhibitions include A Way In at the Curfman Gallery at Colorado State University, Nature Lover at Southern Vermont Arts Center, User Network at Lane Meyer Projects, and Translated Landscapes at Firehouse Art Center. Chloe lives and works in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Artist Statement
My work reflects my interest in big-picture, primordial questions about what it means to be human. Climate change and digital culture feature as two challenges that require redefining what it means to be human and repositioning ourselves in relation to our changing environments. I make 2D, mixed-media works combining textiles, collage, photography, and painting. These brightly colored pieces, frequently incorporating appropriated or found images, visually fragment our digital environments and the landscape. Through collecting and fragmentation, I hope to reassemble pieces from our information-overloaded, remixed culture into a version of wholeness that helps us see and reimagine our place in a changing world.
The mixed-media textile pieces and collages in my recent work explore the challenge of moving outside of a human perspective to truly know and love nature. Stock photos and printed found fabric present idealized versions of the landscape, removed from human impact. References to merit badges—created using machine embroidery—feature prominently as a human lens for viewing the environment and marking human “achievement” in relation to the environment. Portraits of wildlife based on photographs of taxidermized animals also include friendship bracelets, pairing the cruelty and fascination that exist side-by-side in our relationship to nature.
The images appear to highlight closeness with nature, but the unsustainable materials, fragmentation, and source images for the pieces show the tension and artifice in our relationship with nature. Through anthropocentric depictions of nature, I explore the ways we attempt to access nature and ultimately learn more about our limited human viewpoint in the process.
www.chloewilwerding.com
