Art & Object Fall Fair 2024

In the Studio BY BARBARA MACADAM

Installation view of Sam Moyer: Ferns Teeth at the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York (June 30–September 29, 2024). Sam Moyer, Fern Friend Grief Growth , 2024. PHOTO: © GARY MAMAY. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND SEAN KELLY NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES.

SET IN STONE

Sam Moyer’s marble “paintings” confront the mysteries of nature.

Alone, occupying a single wall in the Parrish Art Museum’s light-drenched first gallery space in Water Mill, NY is an improbably massive (10 feet by 20 feet by 1 inch), strangely delicate sculp ture that the artist refers to as a painting. Enigmatically titled Fern Friend Grief Growth (2024),

it is made of marble and acrylic on plas ter-coated canvas mounted to medi um-density fiberboard. The collage-like sculpture resembles a drawing made up of irregularly shaped pieces of white marble that brightly reflect their sur roundings. A photographed reproduc tion of the carving gives little indication of its weight, density, and musculari ty. In the center of the room, two large, raw chunks of prized Alabama marble with red striations serve as a vantage

point for viewing and engaging with the work on the wall. Crafting and installing this strik ing, powerful, and mystifying creation has enabled artist Sam Moyer to turn the museum into an extension of her home studio, keeping a wide array of materials and procedures in play. Her show, which opened on June 30 and runs through September 29, is titled “Sam Moyer: Ferns Teeth” and addresses nature at its most lyrical, anxiety-pro

ducing, and assertive. The exhibition reaches out to encom pass the architecture of the museum, the light, the air, its surroundings, and the presence of its visitors. All are ele ments in this multimedia, multidi mensional, and multidirected artist’s conception, as is the landscape—spe cifically, that of the North Shore of Long Island, where Moyer has spent many summers. “I want everything,” she says of her

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Fall 2024 | Art&Object