Ann Wessmann

Ann Wessmann is an artist living and working in Boston. She received a BS from Skidmore College and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Wessmann has been a professor in the 3-D Fine Arts Department at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston since 1978, and has been head of the Fibers program since 1994. Wessmann’s mixed media wall reliefs, sculptural objects and site specific installations have been exhibited throughout the US including locally at the Fuller Craft Museum, the deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum, the Art Complex Museum, the Mills Gallery, Spoke Gallery @ Medicine Wheel Productions, and Suffolk University Gallery. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections. Wessmann has been a member of the Kingston Gallery since 2002 and has had six major solo shows and five smaller solo shows at the Kingston since 2001.

Study for Homage to the Ash Tree at Pleasure Bay 2017

*Words Unspoken Series: 37,499 days* 2009

Artist Statement

Ann Wessmann’s objects and installations explore themes relating to time, memory, beauty and the ephemeral. With a background in fiber and textile processes, Wessmann develops works through repetition and the accumulation of a variety of materials. Materials are chosen for their expressive potential; translucent vellum, various personal mementos such as locks of hair from family members, texts from family journals and letters, or natural materials such as plants, shells and stones. The works have a strong relationship to text and textiles, pattern, transformation, order and chaos, landscape and the body.

Wessmann engages the viewer through the physicality of materials, and the use of scale. Viewers often confront works which mirror the human body; larger scale installations may surround the viewer. In some cases works of a small scale are created requiring the viewer to look from a very close perspective.

While the work may begin as the commemoration of the life of a family member, Wessmann’s hope is that the work will have universal appeal and remind viewers of their own history and relationships.

The most recent body of work Being: Vertical+Horizontal looks at life as a pattern, a continuous series of movements from being vertical or upright by day and lying down horizontally by night. As the pattern develops it honors the individual day/night and attempts to honor the accumulations of each day/night while also resigning to the blurriness of the whole.

http://www.kingstongallery.com/artists/ann-wessmann/index.php