Today we’d like to introduce you to Audrey Goldstein.

Audrey, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?

I grew up on Long Island, which allowed me to go into MOMA every weekend while in high school, and Brooklyn Museum Art School in summers. I was very serious, but also terrified. It was pretty tough being a young, serious female in art school. I sought out the then newly-hired women faculty at Museum School (SMFA/Tufts) and again at grad school at MassArt. That actually helped me understand community and drove me to contribute to one afterwards. That, for me, is the most important factor in surviving as an artist. Bring everybody up, learn what we all need, practice.
I’m fortunate to work with undergraduates in a liberal arts college. I love teaching and working with young artists. It’s a tremendous privilege to be able to connect with them as they build their own passions. Teaching has helped me understand my own goals, has kept me grounded and inspired.

I joined an artist-run gallery after grad school, which gave me the freedom to be as experimental as I needed. I met the person who eventually took me on as a gallery artist after I left the artist co-op. She was very generous with me and supported me through my constant explorations and experiments, allowing the work to expand and grow through multiple one-person exhibitions. She recently closed her gallery, so I’m exploring new options, working with more experimental spaces. Its pretty exciting!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

I have no idea how I’d work without obstacles. Obstacles give me material to work with. They are, in a way, question generators.

The struggles have been about how to work as an artist without external resources. How to rear a physically and emotionally healthy child and maintain a studio practice while earning a living. How to be a responsible, empathetic human being while finding balance in practicing art and life. How to make work that I respect, that challenges and refreshes me, that doesn’t lead to complacency and boredom.
It’s a struggle to not get too comfortable with my work, to continuously make work I don’t yet understand. This leads back to the question generators, the way obstacles can be inspirational. For example, when I’m deep into a piece, and I need to leave the studio for three or four days to go teach, the absence from the work allows me to walk in with fresh eyes and see how the work of the previous week reads. If it doesn’t catch my breath and startle me, I know its not working yet. So the questions begin; what does the piece do, and what doesn’t it do? What can provide a foil or oppositional element that stretches the content of the work, that breaks it out of its equational balance, that offsets it enough to become engaging? I’ve learned to use obstacles as tools to interrogate the work, to make it grow.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?

Much of my work has been involved with viewer engagement. I’m a sculptor because I feel through my perceptions, located in the body. I invite my viewers to participate in the work in various ways. I’ve done work where I’ve worn sculpture while wandering through city streets or museum grounds, (Brooklyn Bridge Park and DUMBO, Boston’s SOWA neighborhood, Decordova Sculpture Park) while speaking to people I’d meet. I invited them to make a knot in thin wire for each person they felt closest to at that moment. They tied these wires onto the sculpture, adding their stories to the collective I carried around. (The Data Bearers, www.audreygoldstein.com/archive/data-bearer)
In another series I made a sculpture that moved off the wall and formed a long, weighted quilt. Participants were invited to sit on provided stools and place the weighted quilt over their laps. The weighted quilt was intentionally grounding, relaxing people and providing them with the space to share their own stories with each other. They were invited to write a note about their experience on provided tags, that I attached to the end of the quilt, adding to the emotional weight of the quilt. (Conversation Quilt. www.audreygoldstein/intimate-toxicities/conversation-quilt)
My current work involves suspended sculpture that provides multiple openings that frame views of the space, of other viewers, of the work itself. These works slowly rotate, so the participant’s point of view is constantly shifting, constantly changing

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?

Community building around one’s artistic practice is essential. I stress this in my classes.
Find the balance between time in the studio and time for serious looking and discussing. Do it together to learn from each other. Be curious about the work of other artists and curators. Develop good listening and looking skills.
My classes focus on building tools for professional and respectful critiques of peers. Students are taught to look deeply, to respond to the evidence of the work in front of them, to listen carefully to what each artist says about their work and their process, to learn how each other thinks and makes.
These skills are essential in helping them form artist communities and useful crit groups when they are out on their own. They must also learn self-examination, so they simultaneously understand their own motives while they work together. These two aspects of professional practice helps them form strong pathways to their career.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.audreygoldstein.com
• Instagram: Audrey.e.goldstein

Image Credits

all photos courtesy of artist