Danica Maier is an artist based in Waddington, Lincolnshire. Originally from the USA, she completed an MFA in painting at University of Delaware in 1998 before receiving an MA in Textiles from Goldsmiths in 2002. Over the last 20 years Maier has exhibited and curated exhibitions nationally and internationally most recently including solo exhibition Stitch & Peacock, The Collection Museum, Lincoln and Midlands and Tooraloorlas, in GECOK gallery, Karlsruhe, Germany.
Danica is part of an international exhibition and research project Topographies of the Obsolete led by Bergen Academy of Art and Design; in which work undertaken during a series of residencies in the abandoned Spode factory was shown in Vociferous Void, as part of the British Ceramics Biennale, Spode factory, Stoke on Trent. She is also part of Returns an artists research group, recently showing in group exhibition Returns at Bonington Gallery, Nottingham and In return at the Sheffield Institute of Art, Sheffield, and is currently working as joint lead on a major 5 year project Bummock: New Artistic Response to Unseen Parts of the Archive. She was co-curator for the British pavilion titled Unpicked and Dismantled for the Textile biennale: 2007 in Kaunas, Lithuania.
Maier has also participated in numerous residency programs including Braziers International Artist Workshop in the UK, was artist in residence at the Fundación Migliorisi in Asuncion, Paraguay, with concluding exhibition Intraducible, at the Museum/Museo del Barro, Asuncion, Paraguay. Through Gasworks/VASL she undertook a textile residency at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, Pakistan and was apprentice at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Her monograph Grafting Propriety: From Stitch to the Drawn line, published by Black Dog Publishing, will be released in Europe and the North America in Spring/Summer 2016. She is currently working as a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University, UK and coordinates The Summer Lodge, an annual two-week artist residency held in the vacated fine art studios at NTU.
Describe your art practice for us
Exploring dualities of material, object or site my work uses site-specific installations, events and drawing to explore ideas of expectations of site, traditional values, and labour. I am interested in manipulating an object or locations expected function and pushing beyond the original intentions. The work has subtle slippages, moments of detail to transgress propriety and suggestive objects; the viewer is required to spend time with the work to encounter these moments of hidden depth found within the materiality. Once seen these subtle transgressions can compel the viewer to think twice about the expected norm they see around them everyday.
How long have you been practising?
Officially (‘properly’ you could say) since graduating from an undergraduate painting course 21 years ago. But really I’ve been practising/making since I was a child; growing up I spent a lot of time in my grandmothers sewing room. Making things with her vast collection of material and objects – one might call them early collaborations.
What is the most interesting/inspiring thing you have seen/been to over the last month, and why?
Lothar Götz’s, Russell Chantry and further exhibition at the Collection and Usher Gallery. Stunning installation recreating Duncan Grant’s Chapel in Lincoln Cathedral. A different and contemporary re-interpretation taking key colours and placement and re-making anew. The rest of the exhibition has models of other possibilities for the Chapel which I also find of great interest in them as drawings as well as their play with scale. But the line drawings of the Seven Sins are seemingly just simple line drawings but the detail of colour, material of the mark and overlapping is just stunning.
Which other artists’ work do you admire, and why?
Clare Rojas – for the use of quilt techniques/structures within installation and painting.
Laura Owens – for her use of paint, particularly when seemingly to be stitch.
Polly Apfelbaum – for her uncompromising use of material and the reminder that painting is but stained fabric.
Gerard Williams – meticulous attention to making, particularly in relation to his use of textiles in/with sculptures.
Andrew Bracey – for use of rules and patterns to create visual complex yet simply stunning works.
Louisa Chambers – for paintings that are like eye candy and the guts to follow a simple (yet ultimately complex) line of enquiry.
Where can people see your work?
I’m really excited that my most recent book ‘Grafting Propriety: From Stitch to the Drawn Line’ is soon to be published by Black Dog. You can pre-order it here: http://blackdogonline.com/all-books/grafting-propriety.html
You can read and see documentation from the work I undertook during residency and exhibition in the abandoned Spode factory in the publication Topographies of the Obsolete: Site Reflections available here (Forsaken Decoration, pg 86-91): https://issuu.com/khib/docs/site_reflections
You can see full documentation from my solo exhibition Stitch & Peacock at The Collection and Usher Gallery. This was artwork developed from a 7-month research residency within the Usher Gallery’s textile collection: http://www.thecollectionmuseum.com/?/exhibitions-and-events/gallery/stitch-and-peacock
Danica was first interviewed in May 2016.
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