Swoon (artist)

For other uses, see Swoon (disambiguation).

Swoon
Birth name	Caledonia Dance Curry
Born	1978 New London, Connecticut
Nationality	United States

Swoon is a street artist born in New London, Connecticut, and raised in Daytona Beach, Florida. She moved to New York City at age nineteen, and specializes in life-size wheatpaste prints and paper cutouts of figures. Swoon, real name Caledonia Dance Curry, studied painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and started doing street art around 1999.

Career

Street Pasting

Swoon in Berlin

Swoon regularly pastes works depict realistically rendered people, often her friends and family, on the streets in various places around the world. Usually, pieces are pasted on uninhabited locations such as abandoned buildings, bridges, fire escapes, water towers and street signs. Her work is inspired by both art historical and folk sources, ranging from German Expressionist wood block prints to Indonesian shadow puppets.

Miss Rockaway Armada, 2006

Swoon is a founding member of the art collective the Miss Rockaway Armada a collective of about 30 artists, performers and musicians who traveled down the Mississippi River the summers of 2006 and 2007 on rafts made from scavenged and recycled materials found in New York City. Starting in Minneapolis, the rafts journeyed to St. Louis, making stops along the way to stage performances.

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, 2008

In the summer of 2008 she presented a two-part exhibition with Deitch Projects called Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea. It was a large installation inside the Deitch Studios space as well as a journey of seven handmade sculptural wooden rafts from Troy, NY down the Hudson River and up the East River in New York City to the Deitch Studios gallery. Every night the crew would stage a performance on the banks of the river, with musical accompaniment from the band Dark Dark Dark.

Swimming Cities of Serenissima, 2009

Swoon and a crew of 30 crashed the 2009 Venice Biennale with "the Swimming Cities of Serenissima," a performance project similar to the Miss Rockaway Armada and the Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea. The crew sailed from Slovenia in rafts made of New York City garbage, as well as one raft made from material scrapped along the coast of Slovenia. The project stopped at various points on the way to meet the locals, collect artifacts for their on-board "cabinet of curiosities" and to prepare for the culminating performance entitled, "The Clutchess of Cuckoo." Once in the Venice Lagoon, the rafts and their company performed throughout Venice nightly and docked at Certosa Island. They "barnstormed" the Grand Canal at 3:00 a.m.

Konbit Shelter, 2010-present

Konbit Shelter is a sustainable building project with the objective of sharing knowledge and resources through the creation of homes and community spaces in post-earthquake Haiti. A group of artists, builders, architects and engineers are working to build permanent, creatively designed structures, which utilize the advantages of earth bag and dome architecture as adapted to the climate and conditions of rural Haiti.

The primary focus of building is on the super-adobe technique of earth bag architecture, which is an extraordinary building design for its ability to create earthquake, hurricane, flood, and fire resistant structures, using inexpensive and locally available resources. Originally designed by Nader Khalili and continued by Cal-Earth, this system of building provides an easily replicable model, which can be built without using specialized construction machinery. Utilizing 90% earth, and only 10% cement, these structures are stronger than the now common cinder block and concrete slab construction. The technique also uses little to no wood, an invaluable asset in timber depleted Haiti.

As of December 2010 a community center and a house have been completed.

Transformazium

Based in Braddock, Pennsylvania the collective of artists and activists, known as Transformazium, provide classes and opportunities for hands-on learning. Their focus is on creative re-use, and re-imagining of Braddock’s derelict urban spaces and resources. The goal is to turn an abandoned 1880s United Brethren Church and its adjacent lot into an experiential learning and arts-based community center.

Exhibitions

Swoon started doing large-scale installations in 2005.

In December 2011 Swoon held her first solo exhibition in London, England, filling the gallery at Black Rat Projects with sculptures and paper cuts.

Press

• Barging In to Venice
• NY Times Article
• NY Times article
• Interview with The Morning News
• Sadie Magazine interview
• Gammablog interview
• KultureFlash interview
• Rising Artist on Curbs and Stoops
• October 10, 2008 "Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea", Scribe Media
• November 2008, "A Two Way Street", ARTNEWS
• Interview with The Huffington Post
• video about Swoon's project Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea at Deitch Projects, New York. 2008
• interview with Swoon about the Portrait of Silvia Elena at Honey Space, New York
• Article and Interview in Time Out London, November 25, 2011

Bibliography

• "Art in the Streets", Jeffrey Deitch, Skira Rizzoli, 2011, ISBN 0-847-83648-7
• "Swoon", Abrams, 2010, ISBN 0-810-98485-7
• "Graffiti World", Thames & Hudson, 2004, ISBN 0-500-51170-5
• "Street Logos", Tristan Manco, Thames & Hudson, 2004, ISBN 0-500-28469-5
• "re:vision", Chris Pieretti, 606, 2006, ISBN 1-59975-832-6

Appearances in other media

• Swoon as herself, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Banksy, 2010
• Swoon as herself, Our City of Dreams, Chiara Clemente, 2009
• Swoon at Internet Movie Database

External links

• Deitch Projects
• Dithyrambalina
• Just Seeds
• Konbit Shelter
• Swimming Cities
• Transformazium