Press Release
Marion Wilson
Tender
September 8 to October 8, 2005
Opening Reception: Friday, September 9,  6 – 8 pm

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm

Contact Rachelle Rae House for further information or go to www.cherylpelavin.com

Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts is pleased to announce Tender, the second solo exhibition by Marion Wilson. Wilson‘s art engages the physical, spiritual and the financial sides of being human and being an artist. These principles guided her in collaboration with homeless men served by the Bowery Mission last summer. Wilson was invited to participate in the New Museum’s 2004 summer exhibition, Counter Culture. This was organized as a walking tour of the Bowery to introduce the New Museum’s new neighborhood to its visitors. For the project the artist created This Store Too, inspired by Claus Oldenberg's Lower East Side Store, circa 1960, as well as by Mott Street's 19th Century pushcart vendors. Wilson made small sculptures that were partially drawn from material purchases she made from street persons. For six weeks she operated a street business; pushing the cart, parking it in front of various local businesses around the Bowery and offering her objects for sale. All decisions for marketing and sales were made in conjunction with her collaborators and all of the profits were donated back to the homeless program and to the "business." The purpose of these sales was not for financial profit, but rather to make transparent the economy of street people and the economy of one artist.

In Tender, Wilson elaborates on ideas initiated with the push cart. The artist states “that she is definitely making merchandise.” Tender’s collection includes: the vendor's cart, small translucent resin change purses containing miniature figures enacting funny, bizarre dramas, eccentrically crocheted scarves, meals with food comforted and protected within crocheted purses, survival kits, and hand-crafted soap that the artist gives to the homeless (who tend to use it not for bathing but to scent their belongings.) Another highlight of the exhibition are monotypes created in the gallery's printshop in collaboration with a Bowery Mission client. In the monotypes Wilson uses soft fabric to create loose maps of Manhattan. Specific locations are marked, indicating areas where the homeless person stayed. They are a homeless person’s guide to the city. They are at once straight-forward and poetic..."When you sleep on the street you don't have dreams.”

In Preparation for Tender, Wilson continued her artistic association with one of the men she met last summer, Luis Guzman. The work in Tender is a reflection of their close friendship and what Wilson describes as "our shared needs for human creature comforts." She quotes her collaborator; "to have a bed to sleep in and not a chair,” "the ability to dream," "to see one's daughter," and "something to do to stave off boredom." Wilson goes beyond any preconceptions of what we may think it is like to be homeless and instead focuses on the small details of what it is to be human.

In the exhibition essay *Mary Murray writes "The wordplay of the title, evokes monetary and emotional associations...These may seem especially grand ambitions for Tender's seeming modesty, but therein lies its meaning of creating important spiritual connections with little material aid." 

Marion Wilson divides her time between Syracuse and Brooklyn, NY. This Store Too was the invited performance/installation featured at ScopeMiami in 2004, curated by Melanie Cohn and Michael Sellinger. Wilson is a Nancy Graves endowed fellow at the Millay Colony; a NYSCA funded residency at Sculpture Space; NYSCA and Elizabeth Foundation residency at International Studio Program in NYC and a Creative Capital finalist. Tender will travel to New Orleans Center for Contemporary Art in 2006.

*Mary Murray is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Munson Williams Proctor Institute, Utica, NY.