St. Petersburg's Cynthia Mason is one of three artists featured by Naples' Baker Museum during its 12th annual Florida Contemporary exhibition.
Mason’s 3D wall constructions evolved organically from her early training, as museum director Courtney McNeil explains.
“She was trained as an architect and is really interested in the concept of the grid as a method of control and creating order and structure, and then … taking that structure and subverting it and destabilizing the grid by making these soft grids out of textiles.”
Mason’s work is highly textured, accomplished by using creative combinations of repurposed materials.
“She uses a lot of repurposed textiles in her work, old bedsheets, comforters,” McNeil said. “She uses shredded documents and junk mail as stuffing for some of her works, and she’s really interested in this idea of trying to exert control on the world at times when it can feel incredibly futile to try and do so.”
Mason’s use of repurposed materials and repetitive shapes and grids is very compatible with the top of the tower of Louise Nevelson’s “Dawn’s Forest,” which her work surrounds. That’s no accident.
“It’s important to get artists to come visit our sites ahead of time so that they can understand the site lines and what we mean when we say, ‘There’s a giant Chihuly in that gallery’ or ‘There’s a massive Louise Nevelson coming up from the floor in the middle of the gallery.’ These are hard things to explain, even with great photos,” McNeil explained.
In addition to the order imposed by grids, Mason’s wall constructions allude to forms found in plant life, such as roots, stems, leaves and thorns. Some invite comparisons to human anatomy, as with “Limp Pricks and Plants in Rising Water.”
In addition to recycled bedding and shredded documents, Mason incorporates fishing line, canvas, porcelain, gesso, ink, fabric and dyes into her mixed media constructions.
“My love for materials results in folding, rolling, attaching and stuffing porcelain, plaster, fabrics, shredded paper and other mediums in haphazard and makeshift methods,” Mason writes in her artist statement. “I love to reveal how materials repel to merge, ooze and crack, how they patina and shift to show their existence.”
Mason received a bachelor's in fine arts from the Ringling College of Art and a master's from the University of South Florida. In addition to 2024 recent residency with the Jentel Artists Residency Program, Mason completed 2023 residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Her work has been featured in more than 50 group exhibitions around the world. Recent solo exhibitions include “Limp Grid” at Parallelogram Gallery in Tampa in 2018 and Fragile State at the 621 Gallery in Tallahassee in 2017.
Florida Contemporary is on view at the Baker Museum through June 29. The other artists featured in the exhibit are Amer Kobaslija of Jacksonville and Marielle Plaisir of Miami.
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