NADA NY 2024
BOOTH 1.07
May 2-5
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To request a preview of HAIR+NAILS’s presentation, email hairandnailsart@gmail.com
In the Gallery:
Ginny Sims — Maud’s Bed
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, April 13, 2024. 7:00-10:00pm
OPEN GALLERY HOURS: walk-ins welcome: Thursdays/Fridays/Saturdays/Sundays 1:00- 5:00 starting April 14 through May 12. Also, appointments can be scheduled 7 days/week via hairandnailsart@gmail.com
HAIR + NAILS (H+N) is thrilled to present Maud’s Bed, the first HAIR+NAILS solo show by Little Rock Arkansas-born, Minneapolis-based artist Ginny Sims. Sims works primarily in clay and moves fluidly between the worlds of craft arts and fine and contemporary arts. Conceptually, she references both the industry and the craft of ceramics, as well as her own personal history, economics, and politics, noting the myriad ways these things have intersected through time. Ginny carries a strong curiosity for how creative practices overlap with acts of living – shared conversation, food, music, movement and so on. In Maud’s Bed, the artist shares souvenirs of her experiences, a collection of her influences, including: 2 Ukrainian women smoking; a sink from a café in the country of Georgia; a boy jumping rope; a sailor smoking a pipe; confused lottery ticket scratcher (did not win); a girl considering her new womanly self with hands on hips; a nameless nun; Salt n’ Pepa, etc.
IN THE ARTIST’S WORDS:
“There is a piece in the show that is a small clay rendition of the Canadian artist, Maud Lewis’s, bed. I was able to see her bed in person, long after her death. Maud Lewis painted, painted, painted, every day. She was born with a disability which would make it difficult to use her hands to paint, but that didn’t stop her. She lived her life in poverty with her fisherman husband. Maud died in 1970 and her husband passed away 9 years later. The house they shared had once stood left to decay in rural Nova Scotia, until it was resuscitated by enthusiasts and presented at the art museum in Halifax, where it became part of the permanent collection. The entire home was transported and put back together exactly how it stood when her husband died. A monument/replica of the house now sits on the original site. It is really the size of a shack. I think often about when I looked right into her house at the museum and saw her bed first – how this was once her private place that we all get to see now. I’m drawn to other beds too, such as Antoni Tàpies’ Llit Obert and Tracey Emin’s My Bed. Conceptually diverse, but each referencing this same place that to me feels vulnerable, loaded, and lonely.
Other subjects and places explored in this body of work: a crowd of anonymous people with Eames house colors; 2 Ukrainian women smoking; a sink from a café in the country of Georgia; a boy jumping rope; a sailor smoking a pipe; confused lottery ticket scratcher (did not win); a girl considering her new womanly self with hands on hips; a nameless nun; Salt n’ Pepa, etc. Many of these serve as souvenirs of my experience, influences of my formation, objects for the viewer to wonder how they fit into the context of their surroundings, which mostly they do not. At times I think about using clay the way that author, Flannery O’Connor, uses words to elicit the darkness of southern poverty and human despair – to the point that you feel it in your bones. I’ve also been thinking about waterflow as a metaphor for life experience – the draining downhill Águas de março’ (Waters of March) was a chart-topper in Brazil. Although universally overplayed, I still turn it up whenever I hear it. The lyrics, a series of images, are like a collage (“a stick, a stone…a sliver of glass… a scratch…a cliff…a snail…a pin…the end of the road, …”). The objects in this show function like Jobim’s lyrics. They are momentary descriptors, a collection of my muses and influences. I was 17 when my great-grandmother left her house for the last time. My great-uncle told me that she stood in the doorway for a long time, looking around inside, before she finally stepped off the threshold and into the car.”
— Ginny Sims
ARTIST BIO:
Ginny Sims is an artist who works primarily in clay. Sims was born in Little Rock, Arkansas and currently lives and works in Minneapolis, MN with her family. She has exhibited in the US and Europe including shows at: Ofr in Paris; Tiwa Select, Los Angeles; White Page, Minneapolis; Carbondale Clay Center, Carbondale, CO; Mast Books, New York City; and at The Shop Floor Project and Charleston Farmhouse in the UK. Ginny’s work has been featured in The Financial Times, The World of Interiors, and Architectural Digest Italia. She has held internships and residencies at: Red Star Studios, Kansas City, MO; Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO; Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY. Ginny has been awarded several grants and awards: McKnight Fellowship for Ceramic Artists (2022), Jerome Ceramic Artists Project Grants (2013, 2019), Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Support for Individuals Grant (2022) and Artist Initiative Grant (2017) and Jerome Foundation Study and Travel Grant (2016).
Ginny Sims has previously exhibited with HAIR+NAILS in group shows RIGHT NOW (2020-1), FUTURE FUTURE (2020), COLLECTING ART (2017-8) and at Felix Fair (Los Angeles, 2024) and NADA Miami (2023).
http://www.ginnysimsceramics.com
Instagram: @ginnysimsceramics
Ginny Sims in her studio.
