Making as Knowing · When I was Here, Thinking of There

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Making as Knowing · When I was Here, Thinking of There by Karly Jean Kainz and Blanca Martinez is the culmination of years spent building, connecting, reflecting, and experimenting. It is an exhibition that toggles both time and place, a reflection of a present moment through the past with the juxtapositions and dichotomies that are always illuminated through both place and time.

One loop must close before another can open. When one loop closes, another opens, one forms, and one begins, and so on until each loop becomes a link to connect and sustain a longer pattern, a longer connection. The yarn is threaded through each loop individually, growing and taking shape by Blanca Martinez as she builds the soft forms of her large scale sculptures with her own hands, and on the spine of nostalgia and memory. The forms are reminiscent of her past of connection, and of a present with fragmented ruptures repaired with sutures of soft yarn joining loop through loop. One loop of tradition, another of values, one for family, one joined by culture, and a final loop of time.

It is through repetition that Karly Jean Kainz offers unexpected moments of wonder and surprise. Building her forms and structures, she recalls the nostalgia of midwestern spaces together with the landscape of the New Mexico desert where she resides. Her structures are imbued with a sense of heavy solidity, with materials found and formed, and added to, bit by bit to build up a sense of place that is intuitive and personal. Her works are a trompe l’oeil of baroque vernacular, built and composed through carving and layering elements that feel both lasting and permanent, and combine the two locations of here and there within the space of now.

Making as Knowing · When I was Here, Thinking of There is a world built both strong and soft. Its foundation is based on the nostalgia of repetitive action connected to time and space. It is of one knot, one mold, one loop and one slab, held together through a foundation of one stitch, and fire that gives the form its place.

- Leslie Moody Castro