Marsha Cottrell
Untitled (Dark red with diamond pattern over grid), 2023
Archival pigment on digital ground on paper, unique
Framed Dimensions:
22 3/8 x 17 3/8 x 1 3/8 inches
56.8 x 44.1 x 3.5 cm
Paper Dimensions:
20 x 15 inches
50.8 x 38.1 cm
Marsha Cottrell
Untitled (Yellow with layered grids), 2023
Archival pigment on digital ground on paper, unique
Framed Dimensions:
22 3/8 x 17 3/8 x 1 3/8 inches
56.8 x 44.1 x 3.5 cm
Paper Dimensions:
20 x 15 inches
50.8 x 38.1 cm
Marsha Cottrell
Untitled (Green with inset border), 2023
Archival pigment on digital ground on paper, unique
Framed Dimensions:
22 3/8 x 17 3/8 x 1 3/8 inches
56.8 x 44.1 x 3.5 cm
Paper Dimensions:
20 x 15 inches
50.8 x 38.1 cm
Marsha Cottrell
Untitled (Pink with orange and red-violet grids), 2023
Archival pigment on digital ground on paper, unique
Framed Dimensions:
22 3/8 x 17 3/8 x 1 3/8 inches
56.8 x 44.1 x 3.5 cm
Paper Dimensions:
20 x 15 inches
50.8 x 38.1 cm
Marsha Cottrell
Untitled (Blue with pattern), 2023
Archival pigment on digital ground on paper, unique
Framed Dimensions:
22 3/8 x 17 3/8 x 1 3/8 inches
56.8 x 44.1 x 3.5 cm
Paper Dimensions:
20 x 15 inches
50.8 x 38.1 cm
Marsha Cottrell
Untitled (Red-orange with horizontal bands), 2023
Archival pigment on digital ground on paper, unique
Framed Dimensions:
17 3/8 x 22 3/8 x 1 3/8 inches
44.1 x 56.8 x 3.5 cm
Paper Dimensions:
15 x 20 inches
38.1 x 50.8 cm
Marsha Cottrell
Aperture Series (42), 2016
Laser toner on paper, unique
Framed Dimensions:
17 1/4 x 24 x 1 inches
43.8 x 61 x 2.5 cm
Paper Dimensions:
11 1/2 x 18 1/4 inches
29.2 x 46.4 cm
Marsha Cottrell
The Deliciousness of Staying Still, 2015
Laser toner on collaged paper, unique
Framed Dimensions:
86 x 147 3/4 inches
218.4 x 375.3 cm
Marsha Cottrell
Environments_6, 2017
Laser toner on paper, unique
Framed Dimensions:
17 1/4 x 14 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches
43.8 x 36.2 x 3.8 cm
Paper Dimensions:
11 x 8 1/2 inches
27.9 x 21.6 cm
Marsha Cottrell
Untitled, 2017
Laser toner on paper, unique
Framed Dimensions:
17 1/4 x 14 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches
43.8 x 36.2 x 3.8 cm
Paper Dimensions:
11 x 8 1/2 inches
27.9 x 21.6 cm
Marsha Cottrell
Hands_2, 2018
Laser toner on paper, unique diptych
11 x 8 1/2 inches each
27.9 x 21.6 cm each
While employed as a magazine freelancer in the late 1990s, Marsha Cottrell established her innovative use of an office computer and electrostatic laser printer, maneuvering the prosaic apparatus to function like a drawing tool—a direct extension of body and mind. In work of the past several years, vector-based lines and shapes found in the software tool palette are printed in layers of carbon-based toner onto sheets of handmade paper, creating one-of-a-kind images that traverse drawing and printmaking, painting, and photography. In Cottrell’s monochromatic work, a distinct vibrational energy reflects a one-on-one relationship with the computer screen and the intangible space within and beyond it.
A meditative stillness occupies the space between viewer and image in a new series of work made by the artist using an archival pigment printer. Here, Cottrell layers transparent color onto rectangular areas of digital ground that have been applied by hand within larger sheets of Mitsumata paper. The luminous pigment, sometimes embedded with subtle grids or lines, interacts with the brushstrokes beneath, creating material images in stark contrast to their virtual origins. As in her black and white work, intermittent scuffs or bent corners highlight the analog mechanism’s fallability. Irregularities in the handmade paper itself, including wide, sweeping strokes that bear evidence of the papermaking process, surround the suspended and subtly-dimensional fields of color.
Marsha Cottrell was born in 1964 in Philadelphia, PA, educated at Tyler School of Art (BFA) and UNC Chapel Hill (MFA), and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Cottrell’s solo exhibitions include Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) Raleigh, NC (2019); Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco (2016, 2023); and Eleven Rivington / Van Doren Waxter, NY (2018, 2015, 2022), among others. Group exhibitions include The Blanton Museum, TX (2023); The Morgan Library, NY (2019); Wexner Center for the Arts, OH (2017); and SFMOMA, CA (2012).
The artist has received fellowships and grants from Anonymous Was A Woman, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Cottrell’s work is included in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, TX; Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf; The Morgan Library & Museum, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; North Carolina Museum of Art, NC; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY.
One of the typical measures of success for artists is the ability to quit their day jobs and focus full time on making art. Yet these roles are not always an impediment to an artist’s career. This exhibition illuminates how day jobs can spur creative growth by providing artists with unexpected new materials and methods, working knowledge of a specific industry that becomes an area of artistic interest or critique, or a predictable structure that opens space for unpredictable ideas. As artist and lawyer Ragen Moss states:
Typologies of thought are more interrelated than bulky categories like ‘lawyer’ or ‘artist’ allow. . . Creativity is not displaced by other manners of thinking; but rather, creativity runs alongside, with, into, and sometimes from other manners of thinking.
"Day Jobs", the first major exhibition to examine the overlooked impact of day jobs on the visual arts, is dedicated to demystifying artistic production and upending the stubborn myth of the artist sequestered in their studio, waiting for inspiration to strike. The exhibition will make clear that much of what has determined the course of modern and contemporary art history are unexpected moments spurred by pragmatic choices rather than dramatic epiphanies. Conceived as a corrective to the field of art history, the exhibition also encourages us to more openly acknowledge the precarious and generative ways that economic and creative pursuits are intertwined.
The exhibition will feature work produced in the United States after World War II by artists who have been employed in a host of part- and full-time roles: dishwasher, furniture maker, graphic designer, hairstylist, ICU nurse, lawyer, and nanny–and in several cases, as employees of large companies such as Ford Motors, H-E-B Grocery, and IKEA. The exhibition will include approximately 75 works in a broad range of media by emerging and established artists such as Emma Amos, Genesis Belanger, Larry Bell, Mark Bradford, Lenka Clayton, Marsha Cottrell, Jeffrey Gibson, Jay Lynn Gomez, Tishan Hsu, VLM (Virginia Lee Montgomery), Ragen Moss, Howardena Pindell, Chuck Ramirez, Robert Ryman, and Fred Wilson, among many others.
Organized by Veronica Roberts, Former Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, with Lynne Maphies, Former Curatorial Assistant, Blanton Museum of Art
Marsha Cottrell and Zoe Leonard are included in "The Way We Are 3.0" at The Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen, Germany from 20 March 2021 - 23 January 2022.
Marsha Cottell will deliver Mary Baldwin University’s 2020 Firestone Lecture in Contemporary Art on 16 March 2020 at 7 pm.
In her work, Cottrell repurposes the functionality of an electrostatic office laser printer, computer, and screen, and inventively utilizes the tools’ capabilities to create luminous images in layers of carbon-black toner. Her seemingly alchemical process gives material form to an open-ended exploration of the tensions and interplay between nature and technology, body and machine, exterior and interior in images that evoke visionary or dreamlike states, nature, and the sublime.
The Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, NC is pleased to present a solo exhibition, entitled Black and Light, of new work by Marsha Cottrell this summer.
The Morgan Library & Museum is pleased to present the group exhibtion, By Any Means: Modern and Contemporary Drawings from the Morgan, with works by Marsha Cottrell. The exhibition will be on view from 18 January through 12 May 2019.
Contemporary approaches to drawing are often experimental and expansive. By absorbing and building upon the legacy of avant-garde experimentation in the first half of the twentieth century, artists from the 1950s to the present have pushed beyond the boundaries of traditional draftsmanship through their use of chance, unconventional materials, and new technologies. By Any Means brings together about twenty innovative works from the Morgan’s collection, including many recent acquisitions, by artists such as Marsha Cottrell, John Cage, Sol LeWitt, Vera Molnar, Robert Rauschenberg, Betye Saar, Gavin Turk, and Jack Whitten.
Van Doren Waxter is pleased to present a group exhibition with new works by Marsha Cottrell, 1 August - 30 August 2018. The group exhibition explores multidisciplinary approaches to depicting forms found in or related to the natural world. Featured historical and contemporary artists include Hilary Berseth, Marsha Cottrell, TM Davy, Jeronimo Elespe, Tom Fiars, Judy Fiskin, Joe Goode, Voliker Huller, Ellsworth Kelly, Cameron Martin, Douglas Melini, Valeska Soares, Hedda Sterne and Kevin Zucker. Spanning almost 60 years (1960-2018), works on view encompass painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture, and demonstrate pictorial strategies ranging from photographic to nearly abstract.
Marsha Cottrell's practice is centered around manipulation of the quotidian office computer and printer. Bridging drawing, printmaking, painting, and photography, Cottrell's process produces luminous images that allude to celestial bodies and interior landscapes. As in Untitled (9:49:46am) (2018), her works meld the sensuality of the corporeal with the enigma of the intangible.
Van Doren Waxter is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new work by New York artist Marsha Cottrell. Titled Screen Life, the show will be on view from March 8-April 21, 2018 at the gallery’s 195 Chrystie Street location. The exhibition will feature three unique large-scale platinum prints and an array of intimately-scaled works created with a computer and electrostatic laser printer.
Petra Rinck Galerie is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Marsha Cottrell.
8 September - 4 November 2017
Marsha Cottrell will be included in the group exhibition, NYPOP Emerging Curatorial Series IV: Worlding, at the Richmond Center for Visual Arts at Westrn Michican University.
Marsha Cottrell will be included in Heliotropes a group show curated by Matthew Nichols at Geary Contemporary, 9 June - 15 July 2016.
The word “heliotrope” names at least two particular things in the world: a popular garden plant that turns its purple flowers toward the sun; and a mirrored instrument once used by land surveyors to reflect sunlight across long distances. As the title of a summer group show, the word is being creatively misread to encompass an array of visual motifs that address the sun and explore its numerous attributes.
Marsha Cottrell and Michael DeLucia will be included in Summer Exhibition at 11 Rivington, 8 June - 29 July 2016.
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