Art Files: Langdon Graves
Detail of How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon, Wood, polymer clay, acrylic paint, rayon flocking, clock hand, carpet, 20 x 58 x 20 inches, 2023.
How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon, Wood, polymer clay, acrylic paint, rayon flocking, clock hand, carpet, 20 x 58 x 20 inches, 2023.
Using sculpture and drawings, Langdon Graves creates a real yet surreal world layered with symbolism, building on her interest in storytelling and myths while exploring family legacy and age-based societal norms. Graves desires to slow and stretch time to have the ability to make significant life choices, particularly that of motherhood. Growing up, she was very close with her grandmother and mother. She always thought she, too, would be a mother, but at 45, it seems unlikely she will have a child. The idea of stretching time and the cycles of life appear in various ways: the lengthening of matches, the birdhouse has a clock controlled by a human finger, and ivy that slowly grows over everything. Due to the human presence (Graves herself) in How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon, no bird will ever nest within the birdhouse/cuckoo clock. The empty birdhouse is also a metaphor for not having a child. Graves's interest in cuckoo birds, which appears in the new work in other pieces, comes from the fact that cuckoo birds lay eggs in other birds' nests for them to raise, a metaphor for being a stepmother.
Eclipse, Wood, polymer clay, brass, acrylic, rayon flocking, LED light, acrylic paint, 55 x 32 x 20 inches, 2023.
Detail of Eclipse, Wood, polymer clay, brass, acrylic, rayon flocking, LED light, acrylic paint, 55 x 32 x 20 inches, 2023.
Detail of Eclipse, Wood, polymer clay, brass, acrylic, rayon flocking, LED light, acrylic paint, 55 x 32 x 20 inches, 2023.
Langdon Graves is a Virginia-born, New York City-based artist who holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Painting and Printmaking and an MFA from Parsons School of Design. She is a faculty member at Parsons and Pratt Institute. Langdon is represented by Dinner Gallery in New York City, has had solo exhibitions in New York, Florida, Virginia, Arkansas, Vermont, and Massachusetts, and has participated in group shows and fairs throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Langdon has attended the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, the Kunstenaarsinitiatief Residency and Exhibition Program in the Netherlands, the Object Limited residency in Bisbee, Arizona, and STONELEAF Retreat in upstate New York. She is a recipient of Canson & Beautiful Decay’s Wet Paint Grant and has been featured in Art in America and Artnet, VICE Creators, Juxtapoz, Art F City, Blouin Artinfo, Hyperallergic, and Madeline Schwartzman’s See Yourself X.