Mindy Hirt is a Semi-finalist for the Sondheim Prize

The semifinalists for the 2011 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize were announced today! I am very excited to announce that I am one of the semi-finalists!

This is the sixth annual competition awards a $25,000 fellowship to a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Greater Baltimore region. The Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize is held in conjunction with the annual Artscape juried exhibition and is produced by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts. The finalists and semifinalists exhibitions are presented in partnership with The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) and Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Artscape, America’s largest, free arts festival, celebrates its 30th anniversary on July 15, 16 and 17, 2011 on Mount Royal Avenue and North Charles Street.

Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize Semifinalists:

Ken Ashton, Washington, DC
Michael Benevento + Andrew Liang, Baltimore, MD
Baltimore Annex Theater, Baltimore, MD
Brian Patrick Miller, Baltimore, MD
Stephanie Barber, Baltimore, MD
A. Moon, Baltimore, MD
Kathryn Bell, Baltimore, MD
Louie Palu, Washington, DC
Milana Braslavsky, Reisterstown, MD
Mark Parascandola, Washington, DC
Abby Donovan, Newark, DE
Christian Parks, Cockeysville, MD
Eric Dyer, Baltimore, MD
Matthew Porterfield, Baltimore, MD
David East, Baltimore, MD
Robby Rackleff, Baltimore, MD
Linda Hesh, Alexandria, VA
Rachel Rotenberg, Baltimore, MD
Mindy Hirt, Westminster, MD <<< that's me!!!!
Adam T. Rush, Baltimore, MD
Brian Kain, Emmitsburg, MD
Jo Smail, Baltimore, MD
JK Keller, Baltimore, MD
Dan Steinhilber, Washington, DC
Dean Kessmann, Washington, DC
Diane Szczepaniak, Potomac, MD
J.T. Kirkland, Sterling, VA
Alessandro Valente, Lutherville, MD
Andrew Laumann, Baltimore, MD
Elena Volkova, Baltimore, MD
Magnolia Laurie, Baltimore, MD
Richard Vosseller, Vienna, VA
Christopher LaVoie, Baltimore, MD
Melissa Webb, Baltimore, MD
Joseph Letourneau, Baltimore, MD
Adam Weir, Baltimore, MD
Michael Mansfield, Washington, DC
Marty Weishaar, Baltimore, MD
Ben Marcin, Baltimore, MD
Wendy Wu, Baltimore, MD
Sebastian Martorana, Baltimore, MD
Jenny Yang, Washington, DC
Allyn Massey, Parkton, MD

For more information visit BmoreArt's blog.

Congrats to everyone who was selected as semi-finalists and good luck in the next round!

The Life and Death of an Installation

When my pieces are installed they are being born to me. They generate connections, passages, and tensions. Uniformly strung with a modest density, they cover and uncover space. The installation lives, moves and breaths with the architecture. Influenced by the most common of elements, it adapts and holds its weight while fulfilling its purpose. Viewers can see this, if they give it the time. And then, it dies.

I became an installation artist when I conquered my fear of the unsustainable.

Nonetheless, de-install is the hardest part of my work. Killing your own creation is not easy. Typically, I do this alone, sometimes with close friends or family. I mourn. Taking down a work of art is numbing at first. I usually try and prolong the first stages of the murder by taking as many photographs as I can manage. Then I tell myself there will be a next time (hopefully) and I will create anew. At the first snip of the scissors, the tension leaves the work. Slowly, with each clip the work deflates and I feel guilty, but through its death comes incitement, a different kind of aesthetic is revealed. Few have seen my pieces fall, but I believe there is something rich in the way my installations heroically pass.

I've documented this part of my process and share it with you now:

The life of Revealed Space: Midland (shown at The Esther Prangley Rice Gallery in Westminster, Maryland. January, 2011.)








The Death of Revealed Space: Midland
















I encourage you to join the conversation with my work by leaving comments below.

Developing Dialogue

My work is formulated through material, often in response to physical space and time. The work is grounded in the process of making and the experience of site specificity. My string installations are not only a response to architecture, but also to the strength and form of the materials used. To me string presents a visual delicacy, balanced by the ample physicality and scale of my work. References to energy, memory, mapping, movement, growth, and object-ness often emerge out of the physical. My pieces make known the space they occupy through intuitive inspiration.

I value growth inasmuch as my entire practice is an evolving process. What I discover in one work, materially, physically, or conceptually, can be the starting point for future works, and so on. Much of my practice is taking from my process and the dialogue that I have with my materials. I have a need to further broaden the context for this ongoing dialogue, so I decided to start a blog . . .




Detail from Atmosphere.

For more information about me and my work visit my website: Mindyhirt.com