Curb Alert Artist Statement

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While primarily working in silkscreen printmaking and markers to create her bold graphic art, this new series of representational paintings is a departure from her typical work. This series began as her contribution to a group exhibition entitled “What is FREE,” hosted at Incline Gallery in San Francisco. While the exhibit’s theme was open-ended and allowed artists to interpret “free” in various forms (nonconformity, political freedom, etc.), her gouache painting series went literal by capturing free piles of discarded belongings on sidewalks. She continues the series here, in “Curb Alert.”

 

“Curb Alert” follows a similar theme in Louise’s other work by elevating commonplace objects. While novel to see in a gallery setting, the familiar sight of free bags, piles, or Craigslist “curb alerts” can evoke unexpected memories or associations. Who hasn’t scored from a free pile? There’s a special familiarity of watching a local free pile decay, like observing changing seasons.

Creating and soliciting free piles are a social practice that is somewhat invisible or unconscious and yet ubiquitous to college towns and urban areas. A free pile show someone’s cyclical pattern of wanting to shed their belongings and also accumulate them. A free pile says, “I was here.” A person walking by it says, “Curb alert!”