Claire Watson Featured In First Solo Exhibition At Amagansett’s Ille Arts

Ille Arts of Amagansett will welcome artist Claire Watson for her first solo exhibition at the gallery, which will run from Saturday, April 14 through Monday, May 14, 2018. Entitled The Thing Is, the show will include all new work featuring some of her largest wall mounted pieces and 12 drawings and gouaches on paper.

Watson’s sculpture concerns “the transformation of found objects that resonate with imagined histories, and that embody transient notions of gender, utility and fashion of their place in time.” The objects in this most recent series are constructed from the intact pattern pieces of leather clothing that have been taken apart at the seams.

The artist is a sculptor originally from Amarillo, Texas, with a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin and an MFA from Tyler School of Art in Rome and Philadelphia. She has worked as a model maker, scenic artist, decorative painter, copy editor, and museum educator, and has taught at Middlebury College, Rutgers University, Dowling College and in other diverse settings while creating and exhibiting sculpture over a 30-year career.

Her accolades include a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1990 and a Fellowship in Sculpture from New York Foundation for the Arts in 2007. In 2014, Watson served as a panelist for the selection of NYFA Fellowships in Crafts/Sculpture. Since 1996 she has lived and worked in Water Mill, where she has raised two sons with her husband, artist Stephen Laub.

You’re invited to join Watson and Ille Arts during The Thing Is‘s Opening Reception on April 14 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Ille Arts is located at 171 Main Street, Amagansett. For more information, call 631-905-9894 or visit illearts.com.