A step inside a studio...
[Kirsten Stolle.]
Person: Kirsten Stolle
Place: The Hatchery Building
Passion: Mark Making
Passion: Mark Making
It is always refreshing to walk into a studio and see a variety of books; vintage books that take your nose decades back, colorful descriptive books from the sixties, medical books from the 1890's and old story books with rosy-cheeked toddlers with over-sized innocent blue eyes. Kirsten Stolle's studio in the Hatchery has a good plethora of books, and she uses fragments of these books for inspiration in her art.
Stolle's art is another story; a mix of fiction and non; a twist on science and discovery; an abstraction of something hauntingly real; Genetically Modified Organisms [GMOs.] Stolle's recent series, called Genetically Commodified, modify her minds interpretations of what would happen if children were to want dolls to mirror themselves. Stolle imagines the children would take cheek swabs of their DNA to send to a Monsanto factory where they would use their “propriety technology”. The outcome; genetically modified dolls. Dolls filled with mutations and grotesque manipulations. Such as a nine headed toddler sprouting out of leech-like membranes adorned with a bright blue and red bib, or 'Pesticide Patty'; eleven midsections of a child's individually clothed body topped with a little girl's head. Interesting? Yes. Scary? Sort of. Mesmerizing? Certainly. Beautiful? Definitely.
Definitely a must see. These images stand alone against a crisp white background, where if anything else were added, the eye would be distracted. The dolls are a statement; raising questions in the viewer's mind; political questions. Stolle takes innocence and corrupts them with corporation. She first learned about Monsanto back in 96 through her mother, and years later started creating against their overwhelming presence and power. Stolle's other series, GM Microorganisms, are, “drawings of imagined microorganisms that develop in your gut after eating genetically modified foods.” Again, this series is hauntingly beautiful and politically powerful. Her images make you think, they make you question, and they ignite your insides in a swimmingly way.
The pieces come together through collage on paper; a mix of graphite, gouache and cut-out images from her collection of books. Stolle has fun naming her pieces. For the Genetically Commodified series, she borrowed names from Monsanto, such as Roundup Ready, and twists them into something more fitting, such as 'Roundup Unready Rosie' or 'Taylor's Timmy' named after Monsanto's former Vice President for Public Policy and current Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the FDA, Michael Taylor. The names for the GM Microorganisms series are a mix of imagination, Latin and relevancy; Stolle looks up the Latin names for images in her creations, such as liver, and then twists them into something of her own. The end result: Hepato Glyphosate; from the Latin-Stolle language.
Stolle's language and creations are ones to be seen and heard. Coming March 2, she is having an opening at the Artery [http://ashevillearts.com/], displaying her Genetically Commodified and GM Microorganism series. The show opens on the 2nd from 6-9PM and will be up all month. Look for two of her images in the forthcoming edition of Slice magazine, a Brooklyn based nonprofit literary magazine published twice a year; March and September. Also, Stolle is featured in the March edition of the local and awesome VERVE magazine [www.vervemag.com.] Check out her websites at www.geneticallycommodified.com and www.kirstenstolle.com . Contact via e-mail for an appointment at kirsten_print@yahoo.com.
