Underdonk

press release

‘Constellation Threads’

September 16th-October 15th, 2023

Opening Reception, September 16, 6-8pm

Underdonk is honored to present a group exhibition of works by Rachel Frank, Laura Frantz, Shradha Kochhar, Courtney Puckett, Padma Rajendran, and Jacqueline Qiu, organized by Elisa Soliven. The artists in this exhibition are united by their common use of textiles and fiber as both subject matter and material.

Rachel Frank combines clay, glass, and fabric to explore our relationships to non-human species, natural history, and climate change.  Many of her sculptures take on the forms of tidal species and shorebirds.  Frank’s focus on indicator species and her ‘Rewilding’ performances reflect her concern with restoring lost ecosystems, climate change, and extinction. Laura Frantz works from her family’s collection of textiles to make paintings that merge still life, landscape, and pattern.  She uses direct observation of common domestic objects like sheets, towels, and pillows as points of entry into place and memory.  Shradha Kochhar makes sculptural objects and flat knitted objects.  She spins her own thread from ‘Kala Cotton’-a cotton crop that is indigenous to India and inherently sustainable without the use of pesticides or artificial irrigation.  Kochhar utilizes a portable booklet spinning wheel (charkha) to make her thread. She then hand-knits her work into structures that evoke body parts, the skin of our bodies, and the spaces that we inhabit.  Courtney Puckett makes use of everyday detritus as material in her work.  She transforms these materials and objects into sculptural abstractions, choosing textiles as the main binding material.  Repurposed fabrics wrap these found objects, transforming them into human-sized characters and archetypes.  Jacqueline Qiu weaves personal relics that hold the memory of her thoughts and surroundings from the time of creation.  Her tapestries take inspiration from Kesi (缂丝; “carved silk”), a tradition of slit-tapestry weaving which likens itself to carving color. There is a devotional quality to Qiu’s process as she ponders the ephemeral and spiritual connections between her mind and nature.  Padma Rajendran joins pattern, symbols, and storytelling in her fabric works. She utilizes various fabrics of differing hierarchies, working silk and wet felted raw and carded wool into her compositions.  Working with the languages of folk art and storytelling through the structure of textile, Rajendran’s work evokes abundance of home and universal heritage.

Softness, interconnectedness, and a direct relationship with the handmade define these works.  Threads and fiber connect us all.  It is the material that we wear closest to our bodies as comfort, protection, a second skin.  The artists in ‘Constellation Threads’ bring us closer to their personal memories of cloth, histories of homeland, and the natural world.

Rachel Frank, born and raised in Kentucky, received her BFA from The Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from The University of Pennsylvania. She is the recipient of grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, and Franklin Furnace Archive. Residencies include Yaddo, Marie Walsh Sharpe, The Museum of Arts and Design, Skowhegan, the Innoko National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska), Franconia Sculpture Park, Socrates Sculpture Park, and MOCA, Tucson (AZ). Her performance pieces have been shown at HERE, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Select Fair, and The Bushwick Starr in New York City, The Marran Theater at Lesley University, and at The Watermill Center in collaboration with Robert Wilson. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include MOCA Tucson (AZ), the SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC), Thomas Hunter Projects at Hunter College (NYC), Standard Space (Sharon, CT), and Geary Contemporary (NYC). She works in wildlife rehabilitation at the Wild Bird Fund and is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Laura Frantz (b. 1981 Beirut, Lebanon) is a painter based in New York City.  Her work has been exhibited at the Hunter College Project Space, Brooklyn Art Cluster, Long Island University (NYC), the Pelham Art Center (Pelham, NY), and Grizzly Grizzly (Philadelphia, PA), among others.  Several fellowships and residencies have supported her work, including the Shandaken Project, Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Ankara, Turkey.  She teaches art at CUNY Hunter College.

Shradha Kochhar (b.Delhi, India) is a textile artist and knitwear designer based in Brooklyn, NY.  Best known for her home spun and hand knitted ‘khadi’ sculptures using ‘kala cotton’ an inherently organic cotton strain indigenous to India, her work is at an intersection of material memory, sustainability and intergenerational healing.  Focusing on generating a physical archive of personal and collective South Asian narratives linked to women’s work, invisible labor and grief, the work is large scale and exists as sculpture beyond whispers over generations.  Kochhar received her MFA in Textiles from Parson School of Design, New York.  She is a former resident at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and is a Van Lier Fellowship and Dorothy Waxman Textile Excellence Prize Finalist and was awarded the John L. Tishman Environment and Design Award for Excellence in 2021.  Her work has been featured in Paper Magazine, Architectural Digest, Vogue, Crafts Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and others.

Courtney Puckett (b. Winter Park, FL) is a Hudson Valley-based visual artist and educator whose work integrates fine art and craft theories and methodologies. She earned a BFA from MICA, MFA from Hunter College, and studied in Aix-en-Provence, France, Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, and the University of New Mexico. Solo exhibitions include Spring Break Art Show (NY), Furnace- Art on Paper Archive (CT), Hesse Flatow (NY), and Flecker Gallery at Suffolk County Community College (NY). Group exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Arlington (VA), Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz (NY), NADA x Foreland (NY), Geary Contemporary (NY), White Columns (online), and BRICArts (NY). Artist Residencies include Yaddo (NY), Constance Saltonstall Foundation (NY), Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (ME), LMCC’s Workspace Program (NY), Vermont Studio Center (VT) (full fellowship), and a community research grant through River Valley Arts Collective. Puckett is an Instructor of Art at CT State Northwestern Community College and has taught at FIT, Parsons School of Design, and Pratt Institute.

Padma Rajendran was born in Klang, Malaysia. She studied at Bryn Mawr College and received her M.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design. She lives and works in Catskill, NY. She has exhibited at the International Print Center New York, Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn), Beers London (UK), Field Projects (New York), September Gallery (Hudson NY) , BRIC Arts Media (Brooklyn), Aicon Gallery (NYC), Taymour Grahne Gallery (UK), and at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (New Paltz, NY). Her works on fabric experiment with the clash and combination of  patterning and storytelling. Her content rich compositions reference the duality and contradictions of culture and the multi-faceted definitions of universal heritage. She has completed residencies at Ortega y Gasset Projects, the Studios at Mass MoCA, Women’s Studio Workshop, Ox-Bow, and Lower East Side Printshop. Her work has been featured in Chronogram Magazine, New American Paintings, Art Maze Magazine, and The New York Times.

Jacqueline Qiu (b. 1999, Montclair, NJ) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in 2022 from the Rhode Island School of Design. With an emphasis in fiber and painting, she explores traditional craft breaking down and combining with personal expression and her investigation of Eastern and Western painting philosophies. Most recently, her work was exhibited at Harper’s Chelsea in New York. Qiu is currently in Iceland, completing the Ós Textile Residency at the Icelandic Textile Center in Blönduós.

Gallery Hours, Saturday-Sunday, 1-6pm
Contact: [email protected], 347-251-5556