PAT FEENEY MURRELL                                         patfeeneymurrell@comcast.net                                                     

ABOUT THE ARTIST

I don’t know if I chose fiber or it chose me.  By training I am a master lithographer, painter, book maker, and installation artist.  I have BFA, MA, and MFA degrees in Painting and Printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art, University of Wyoming, and Pratt Institute.

My lifetime interest is the investigation of why and how Man knows himself through the use of bodily personification.  In 1974,
I began to make imprints of the human body and turn them into lithographs.  These prints are in such collections as the NJ State Museum, Zimmerli Museum , Hunterdon Art Museum, and have been exhibited throughout the US and in Europe.

In 1992, having learned to spray paper, I began creating “paper personas”.  Adventures in “body wrapping” continued through “remnant boxes”—figures in binder’s board boxes; “cocoon bundles”—floating figures enclosed in fabric bundles; “curtain cages”—women’s bodies hung on the outside of “mock cages”; and “conundrums”— playful interactions between man and child.  Exhibited at Noho since 1996, these mobiles have appeared in galleries across the country

ABOUT THE WORK

“Heaven, hell, human”

Installations don’t always comprise the exact same parts.  “Heaven, hell, human” usually features a “heavenly book” often suggesting the vault of Heaven.  Such books may portray a Western concept of Heaven, presenting entwined human bodies printed on handmade paper.  Also included is a “carpet of Hell”, paper cast over rocks, metal fragments, wood scraps, and river stones - an earth skin suggestive of Hell’s heaving lava flows.  Handmade paper body wrapped “humans”—dancing, fighting, crawling—are strung on invisible lines between two “after-existences”. 

All these inter-connected aspects personify the fragility yet endurance of Man’s humanity and his visionary worlds of the spirit.  Equally they testify to the fragility yet strength of the paper. 

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human V,  flax handmade paper mobile sculpture, life size, from the Installation "heaven, hell, human" at Noho Gallery, 2007

human I,  flax handmade paper mobile sculpture, life size, 2007, from the Installation "heaven, hell, human" at Noho Gallery, 2007