JOIN US! The awards presentation: Tuesday, December 10 at SPACE Gallery.
Doors open at 5:30 PM | Presentation starting at 6:00 PM. All supporters and friends of Daniel, Karen, and the MCA are welcome to attend. Registration is required.
The Maine Crafts Association proudly announces Karen Gelardi as a 2024 MCA Maine Craft Artist Award recipient.
The Maine Crafts Association annually honors individual craft artists with the Maine Craft Artist Award to recognize them for exceptional bodies of work and/or their contributions to the field of craft in Maine. The award acknowledges the artist’s dedication, conferring a distinguishing mark of excellence.
The award is selected by an appointed juror, guided by benchmarks of excellence in craftsmanship, inspired design, a singular voice or style, and a career of service to the field. Our 2024 honorees were selected from many well-deserving public nominations by Donna McNeil, founding Executive Director of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation.
“Karen’s distinctive eye, courageous mark making, and commitment to the work across decades coupled with her high aesthetic and continued risk-taking brings her work to the fore, blurring the boundary — if it truly does exist — between fine craft and fine art. Additionally, Karen’s work at Designtex has supported the aspirations and ideas of countless artists, her work with Andrea Zittel through Smockshop sets a goal for the future in terms of consumption and need, and her sidewalk art exhibit and garden is a truly inspirational gift to the community.” — Donna McNeil
Gelardi creates work around the idea of resiliency and adaptation, inspired by strategies found in nature and industry. Her work blends traditional and contemporary mediums and technologies integrating art, craft, and design, and reflects tensions around utopian promises of Bauhaus design theories uniting art and industrial production.
Her work begins with observational ink drawings of natural forms. The drawing takes a journey, being reproduced, reduced, and transformed into different ideations of adaptable and modular forms in print, fabric, sculpture, mixed media, and installation. These mutations highlight the adaptability and inherent qualities of the original imagery in an effort to explore and model “resilient systems.”
Whether it be a textile design, an installation, a print project, or more, Gelardi is committed to “integrating creativity with practical and social considerations.” Currently, Gelardi works at Designtex, a company specializing in materials for built environments, as a Principal Designer and Collaborations Liaison focusing on digitally printed products. In her role, Gelardi engages fellow Maine artists to create new patterns for the company, providing them with production resources and economic opportunities. She also collaborates with creatives from around the world, museums, and foundations.
In a series of projects she calls “New Factories” Gelardi investigates the role of craft within various production models such as grassroots manufacturing, mass customization, on-demand production, and 3D printing. It includes knit ‘prints;’ handwoven panels created by a network of weavers for artist Andrea Zittel; 120 appliqué banners each with a unique composition for the Freehand Hotel in Chicago; and customizable digitally printed materials for built environments via Designtex.
Gelardi’s fabric sculptures are an exploration of resilient systems. Fabric-covered ropes incorporating her printed fabrics are modular and adaptable. These elements exemplify resilience through their ability to be presented in various configurations, with drawings that interconnect, camouflage, and transform, often utilizing salvaged and repurposed materials.
From 2007 to 2011 Gelardi was a “remote smocker” for Andrea Zittel’s Smockshop and Panelshop, where her designs and drawings were printed onto fabric and used to create “functional handsewn smocks, panels, and objects that explored enterprise as a means to support an art practice.”
Gelardi, who received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, has lived in Maine for over 40 years. Her artwork has been exhibited widely across Maine including at Interloc, Perimeter Gallery, Alice Gauvin Gallery, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, SPACE Gallery, and The Map Room. Additionally, her work has been included in galleries in New York, Austin, Chicago, London, and Munich.
She has been awarded residencies at Surf Point, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, and the Quimby Colony. She has also received grants from the Maine Arts Commission and the St. Botolph Club Foundation and her work has been published by Wingate Studio.
On behalf of the Maine Crafts Association, Donna McNeil has additionally selected artist Daniel Minter of Portland, Maine as a 2024 Maine Craft Award recipient.
Both Gelardi and Minter will be honored at the annual awards presentation and ceremony held on December 10 at SPACE Gallery at 5:30 pm. The presentation will include speakers on behalf of the artists, the awards tradition of gifting a handmade pin that reflects the honorees to the recipients, and some words from Maine Crafts Association’s leadership. The public, friends, and supporters of both honorees are welcome to register for and attend the presentation to celebrate the recipients.
Space is limited, registration is required.
