VERY TENDER July 24 - August 21, 2021 Open Saturdays 12-4pm and by appointment Opening: July 24, 4-8pm Melanie Bernier Patrick Carroll Josh Cloud Lydia Kern Sara Sutterlin Nina Szenasi Flora Wilds It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender. —Jenny Holzer My internet spills over with aching handmade messages, from people I know and people I don’t. As the habitability of the world seems to just keep dwindling, cottage industries and #cottagecore thrive online, where grief, nostalgia, fantasy, art, and economic survival can now network with breathtaking ease. New architectures of validation come with new puzzles: how to define oneself, how to declare oneself an artist, how to declare oneself a real artist, how to find your way in, how to find your way out, how to show your face, how to craft your presence, how to make money without waking up and finding your soul is gone, and/or that it's been chopped up into irresistible little hors d'oeuvres. Quilting and Instagram both work in close relation to The Grid, and both are structures capable of accommodating great tenderness. Unlike fiber art and fashion, though, The Algorithm feels big, mathematical, and mean. We know it’s ultimately driven by greed (money, data, power), and we know it’s racist. And yet we keep logging on and keep sharing our feelings, keep proudly offering up images of our bodies and the things we make — sometimes for money, always for love. We marvel at each other’s softness and stitches and we sprinkle digital red hearts liberally. In spite (or because) of everything, we keep making and maintaining connections of care — learning about new artists, lifting up our friends and their work, sending reparations and mutual aid money to people we’ve never met in places we’ve never been. “The handmade” has so often been framed as a sweet and benign counter to the cold, hard, modern times. Sure, but craft is not a monolithic entity, and neither art nor survival are necessarily benign. Every work in this show is an expression from someone working with powerful forces of tenderness — not just in their self-interest, but in the interest of growing fuller spaces for experiencing love and rage, cultivating things we need for comfort and strength — fighting words, a warm blanket, a powerful garment. Detail of "Everyone Says", Melanie Bernier, 2021.