Artist-in-Residence

Beverly Semmes

Beverly Semmes, with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, Watching Her Feat (exhibition view), 2000. Fabric, polyester filling and attendant. Installation dimensions variable. Collection of the artist. Photo credit: Aaron Igler.

After creating a first residency project with FWM in 1997—a mechanized, gigantic black cat made from crushed velvet, called RISEANDFALL—Beverly Semmes returned in 2000 to investigate a new form and material. Entitled Watching Her Feat, the dominant visual cue in this installation and exhibition of the same name is the color of bright, fluorescent yellow.

Sewn from rip-stop nylon and stuffed with biodegradable peanuts, the forms of Watching Her Feat are gigantic mounds made from overlapping and wound tubes of yellow fabric. A window to the outdoors is covered with red translucent fabric tubes, and the interplay of the warm glow of the red against the sensory-overload of the fluorescent yellow creates a total environment of color. An attendant, dressed in the same electric fabric, sits in a single chair in the middle of the installation of feces-like mountains, adding one interpretation to the mysterious title: perhaps a stand-in for the artist herself, the attendant keeps watch over Semmes’ creative feat.

Semmes exhibited this fabric installation in conjunction with a series of videos, which offered a visual pun to the show’s title through their literal portrayal of the artist’s feet shot from her own vantage point. Filmed in different settings and with various manipulations to her feet (band-aids in one, Vaseline in another), the videos depict the artist watching her feet as they traverse water, walk along boards of a deck, or make their way through pools of purple fabric.

Artist Bio

American, born 1958 in Washington, D.C. Lives and works in New York, NY. 

Beverly Semmes is a sculptor whose work incorporates painting, drawing, film, photography, and performance. Her interdisciplinary practice explores complexities surrounding the representation of the female body in media and culture. A D.C. native, Semmes received an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 1987, following studies at the Boston Museum School, Skowhegan School of Art, and Tufts University.  

Semmes has been honored with many solo exhibitions, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; The Ginza Art Space, Tokyo, Japan; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. Her work was most recently included in at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA and the 57th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA. Semmes’ work can be found in the permanent collections of the Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX; the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, The Netherlands; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.