Swoon: Humanitarianism in the Street and in the Museum

July 14, 2017

We recently framed a wonderful print from Brooklyn based multimedia artist Swoon. It came to the studio from a collector who had a number of new street art acquisitions. This particular figurative image was printed over a lovely purple, pink and green watercolor background and we framed the work with maple hardwood moldings, museum board and museum glass. The gallery style framing offered a sense of elegance in keeping with the artist’s seamless flow between street and high-art.  

The finished framed Swoon print in the studio

Swoon was born Caledonia Curry in 1977 in New London, CT and received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2002. During her art school years she began a street art practice (around 1999) wheat-pasting life size human figures and portraits to walls around New York and other cities. Her practice quickly developed to include large-scale installations of her cut paper imagery and in 2005 she was given a solo exhibition by influential dealer and curator Jeffrey Deitch. Deitch has subsequently become something of a mentor to the artist and numerous gallery and museum opportunities have followed including 2014’s “Submerged Motherlands” at the Brooklyn Museum.

The installation, "Murmuration" including a larger version of the image we framed

Swoon takes a humanitarian approach to her art and has worked on behalf of the reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and Haiti after earthquake in 2010. She created a flotilla of rafts created from refuse and scavenged materials for the 2009 Venice Biennale. Over the course of several months in 2013 Swoon worked with youth from areas affected by Hurricane Sandy to produce a series of images appearing on walls throughout the city in hurricane affected areas including Red Hook, Coney Island, Far Rockaway, and Staten Island. The “Recovery Diaspora” series culminated in a Hurricane Sandy themed mural on the Bowery Mural Wall on Houston Street in Manhattan. Swoon keeps it real continuing to work with local community organizations, like Arts Gowanus in her borough of Brooklyn.

Mural from the "Recovery Diaspora" project on the Bowery Mural Wall, Houston Street

The image we worked with is an iconic figure in her work having appeared in installation form and serving as the centerpiece for the Bowery mural. It’s always exciting and gratifying to work with art from such amazing local talent!

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