Opening Reception
Friday, 1 February 2008, 5:30–8 p.m.

Artist Lecture
6 p.m.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to announce Forest Through The The Trees, an exhibition by New York based artist Cameron Gainer. The artist will be lecturing and presenting video at the opening reception on February 1st at 6:00 p.m., and he will be available for questions afterward. The event is free and open to the public.

Gainer is an emerging artist and a graduate of the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He works with photo, video, and multiple media in his sculptures. The Bigfoot sculpture on display at The Fabric Workshop and Museum is part of a series exploring myth and urban legend. It is one of three public commissions, which also include a sculpture of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster for the Salt Marsh Nature Preserve in Brooklyn, and an upcoming project at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum.

Standing over six feet tall, Gainer's Forest Through The The Trees is a life-size embodiment of Bigfoot as captured in the famous Patterson-Gimlin Film. He has recreated frame 352 of the film, which shows the creature in its iconic mid-stride glance at the camera, as a three-dimensional sculpture. It is made from a steel and fiberglass skeleton, covered with faux fur and modeling compound, and has a pair of piercing glass eyes. It is also meant to be a Òphoto-op propÓ that allows the viewer to be a participant in the project as re-creator of the original film footage or perpetuator of it as a supposed hoax. The work was originally shown at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens in 2006.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum also will be displaying a wall-sized photo reproduction of Gainer's Nessie sculpture and will be screening In Person, his 2005 video project, which was shot at a look-alike convention in Las Vegas. In conjunction with the exhibition, The Fabric Workshop and Museum is offering a limited edition of artist multiples available at the Museum Shop. These silk scarves feature images of fur from the figure and the silhouette of Bigfoot as seen in the installation.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum is the only contemporary art museum in the United States devoted to creating new work in fabric and other materials in collaboration with emerging and established artists from around the world. Founded in 1977, The Fabric Workshop and Museum has developed from an ambitious experiment to a renowned institution with a widely recognized residency program, an extensive collection of work by resident artists, in-house and touring exhibitions, and comprehensive educational programming that includes lectures, tours, in-school presentations, and student apprenticeships.

All FWM exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public.
Hours: Mon. - Fri. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sat., 12 noon to 4 p.m.

The programs of The Fabric Workshop and Museum are supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts; The Judith Rothschild Foundation; Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency; National Endowment for the Arts; Miller-Plummer Foundation; LLWW Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; U. S. Institute of Museum and Library Services; Nimoy Foundation; The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission; Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro; Independence Foundation; PNC Foundation; The Philadelphia Cultural Fund; E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; Claneil Foundation; Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation; Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation; The Henry Luce Foundation matching gifts program; The Barra Foundation; LEF Foundation; Louis N. Cassett Foundation; Quaker Chemical Foundation; and the Board of Directors and members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.

For more information, please contact Alex Sadvari, Communications Coordinator, at 215-568-1111 ext. 15, alex@fabricworkshopandmuseum.org. For general information, call 215-568-1111.

Upcoming Exhibitions

Past Exhibitions

Calendar of Events