2007-
Liberum Dories
And just like that, from 2007 on, we were building dories in our shared studio space in the Gowanus. We took down plywood fencing from around the neighborhood, as the city was still debating whether to upzone the future EPA Superfund site, and there was a lot of plywood fencing to take.
At the time our studio was on the second floor, so Stephan devised a block and tackle system to get the boats down through the stairwell. Then we invented the semi-dory.
The first boats were built over a single weekend with friends from the neighborhood and were launched in NY Harbor on the second day.
Exhibitions
Off the Grid, Neuberger Museum at SUNY Purchase,
2007, curated by Jacqueline Shilkoff, Galen Joseph-Hunter, Tom Roe, Tianna Kennedy.Beyond a Memorable Fancy, EFA Project Space, 2008, curated by Michelle Levy.
EFA Project Space presents Beyond A Memorable Fancy, an exhibition about print, perception, and artistic intervention.Focusing on the transformative aspects of printmaking, Beyond a Memorable Fancy explores the current trend of artists experimenting with print techniques in order to appropriate and manipulate information—be it from text or image sources, cultural symbols, or nature. The art in the exhibition spans a range of unconventional formats, including experimental film, laser stencil graffiti, vinyl signage, cast shadows, and boat-making paraphernalia. Even the more common print techniques present are used to achieve an unexpected result.
We produced an installation of a dory, which had to be cut in half to get in the gallery, thus producing a semi-dory, our first. We also produced a broadsheet, #2.
Going Places Doing Stuff at the Tugboat Graveyard (with Marie Lorenz), Flux Factory, 2010
A field trip to Arthur Kill, aka Tugboat Graveyard, with Flux Factory and Marie Lorenz, as co-hosts of the “Going Places, Doing Stuff” excursion organized by Jean Barberis and Marie Lorenz.
The Wall Street Journal’s Julie Platner covered the field trip in her photo blog, blogs.wsj.com/photojournal/2010/08/22/mystery-tour/, images of which are included at right.
The Wall Street Journal’s Julie Platner covered the field trip in her photo blog, blogs.wsj.com/photojournal/2010/08/22/mystery-tour/, images of which are included at right.
(photo credit: Julie Platner for The Wall Street Journal)
Liberum Dories and Paper Canoes at UGA, 2013, curated by Adriane Colburn.
We were invited by artist and friend Adriane Colburn from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at UGA to come down as visiting artists in the Foundations program.
The students of Jacob Brault’s 3-D Design Class did an amazing job building three of the boats on their own. There were two really cute Portuguese dinghies made after this design–and one of our own Liberum Dories. Having made a few of these before, I was impressed (and a little relieved) that it came together so nicely and proved its seaworthiness immediately.
The fourth boat was a collaboration between Mare Liberum and a number of the undergraduate students from Adriane’s Foundations drawing classes and several other students and classes in the art department. It was also the very first PapeREI Canoe to hit the water.
The students contributed scores of drawings of native plants they had collected. The drawings were made on 2’ long, 4” wide strips and glued in place on the first and last layers of the hull. The seats, the stems, and the floorboards were all cut on our new friend Michael Olivieri’s CNC router, and–once attached to the gunnels–made the boat plenty stiff. This makes it a lot easier to build, and the boat did great once on the water.
ML Dory (Broadsheet #1) (2.41 mb)
ML Dory (Broadsheet #2) (8.3 mb)
Dory Full Template (888 kb)
166 7th Street // Gowanus Studio Space
Brooklyn, New York 11215