About the Artist

 

Addie Langford lives and works in Detroit. She completed her MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art in ceramics after a BFA in architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2006-07 she was a Fulbright Fellow in Madrid, Spain, where she conducted research on tapestry in relation to contemporary collage. Drawing upon her Fulbright research she completed and exhibited a body of large scale mixed media drawings, Slow Knots, in 2007 in Madrid. Since then, her practice has focused on painting, mixed media collage, and ceramics. In 2018 she launched a solo exhibition of paintings on domestic fabric and large scale ceramic vessels at the Hill Gallery, Birmingham, MI.

Langford’s practice draws on her varied background in painting, ceramics, drawing, fabrics, and structural influences from architecture and craft.  Her work is marked by layering and uneven densities in relation to the support, and a hyper-exposure of materials to subtle natural forces (water, pressure, layering, erosion, thinning, thickening), not in order to destroy, but to form, warp or shape. Her works archive the subtlety of deformation and the experience of natural and imposed stresses.

Traditions in Southern Appalachian craft from quilts to barn structures, weaving, and vessels emerge and recede as forms or fragmentary histories in the work are in dialogue with movements such as Supports/Surfaces and Korean Dansaekhwa, or artists such as François Rouan, Simon Hantaï, and McArthur Binion. For Langford, the art of attention comes from slow craft, and this patient looking correlates to the speed or endurance of daily life. The patience, or sometimes stamina, required in traversing thresholds or conflict is mirrored in her making.

View Addie's work at the Hill Gallery

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    Unless noted, all images are by Tim Thayer
    All measurements are represented in imperial measure

    This website was designed by artist, legal worker, educator, photographer, communications designer, and dear family friend, Cece McGuire

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