Pinky/MM Bass (she/her) is known for powerful work that experiments with alternative photographic processes, mixed media and performance to visually address lifecycles, death, transformation and memory. Grounded by autobiography, and her singular point of view, Bass integrates outside stories, influences, and voices to create bodies of work that evolve out of the unknown and unknowable. Her work lives in the dialogue between art, science, and subjectivity. 

Alabama Contemporary is pleased to present Threads of (dis)Integration, an anti-retrospective, guided by a pillar of the Southern art scene. Building on a long history of collaboration, Bass is creating work that both enlists and pays homage to the folx that have impacted her work and life over her long career. This is an exhibition made entirely of new and ongoing collaborative work to create a future-legacy that surveys  and celebrates the most meaningful artistic voices to touch Pinky’s life. Large scale site-specific installations will pull from the artist’s long working history of integrating other voices into her work, and encouraging interventions on her own. Bass has asked 4 artists to perform/install/create with her, Douglas Baulos (AL), Renée Dossett (LA), Carolyn DeMeritt (NC) and Rivers Tilley (AL); in addition to a long distance/ Intervention Project that uses the mail to collaborate with another 20+ photographers, writers, family and friends. Rather than a ‘greatest hits’ exhibition, this call and response approach to exhibition-making aims to untangle and re-weave the threads of Bass’s own practice, presenting Pinky/MM Bass in dialogue within a much larger spectrum of experience.

Today there is all kinds of new science that proves something we’ve always known: we are the relationships we hold. Babies require touch to survive. We age faster without new ideas and challenges in front of us. Our nervous systems, the chemicals our brains produce, and the physical health of our bodies (as well as our minds) correlate to the kinds of engagement we hold with others. From birth to death, we have a biological need for human interaction. Likewise, personal identity is easy to take for granted; we think we are who we are in private. But how we see ourselves, the way we understand our own identity, is perhaps most visible when reflected in others. More than we are our choices, we are our impact. 

Pinky/MM Bass (she/her) is known for powerful work that experiments with alternative photographic processes, mixed media and performance to visually address lifecycles, death, transformation and memory. Grounded by autobiography, and her singular point of view, Bass integrates outside stories, influences, and voices to create bodies of work that evolve out of the unknown and unknowable. Her work lives in the dialogue between art, science, and subjectivity. 

Building on a long history of collaboration, this is a body of work that both enlists and pays homage to the folx who have impacted Bass’s work and life over her long career – a future-legacy that surveys and celebrates the most meaningful artistic voices to touch Pinky’s life. Enlisting Douglas Baulos, Renée Dossett, Carolyn DeMeritt and Peg Rivers Tilley as core collaborators, in addition to 20+ photographers, writers, family and friends, this call and response approach to art-making aims to untangle and reweave the threads of Bass’s own practice, presenting identity as a dialogue that moves and changes as we move and change each other.

– e. elliott, Curator

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I am because we are   

- Ubuntu Philosophy

All ideas emerge from conjunction.         

- Hume

A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow (souls); and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

- Herman Melville

My life, like a tapestry, has threads that have encoded themselves in me and shown themselves throughout my web of people, materials, experiences and feelings. Strands pass through barely perceptible pinholes and permeable cells, creating conjunctions to be investigated, interwoven, or re-worked.

• In Photography I found my voice.
• My children (Family) revealed my passions (engineering, nature, science, art).
• Artist friends offered me mutability (Kitty, Carolyn, Peg/Rivers, Doug, Renee).
• Inter-disciplinary processes gave me multivocal tools:

..stitching on photographs during my sister’s journey through cancer (Needles),

..steaming Tung leaves onto fabric,

..creating handmade paper pages, writing on photographs and journaling (Page/Books).

• Places I have passed over (Fairhope, Mexico, South Georgia) have molded and transfigured me.

- Pinky/MM Bass

ARTIST BIO:

Pinky Bass, raised and based in Fairhope, Alabama; Bass is a veteran of more than forty solo shows plus participation in numerous national and international group exhibitions. Born January 20, 1936, Pittsburgh, PA holds a BA Degree from Agnes Scott College, earned in 1958, and a MFA in Photography earned in 1988 from Georgia State University. Returning to college for an MFA in painting and drawing at age 50, Bass discovered her true voice in photography through installation, mixed media, and performance figure prominently in her current work.

She has had over 40 one and two-person shows and participated in numerous group exhibitions throughout the US as well as in Mexico, Italy, Germany, Macedonia, and Canada. Her work can be found in publications including The Polaroid Book, the Pinhole Journal, and Book of Alternative Photographic Processes. She is featured in Coat of Many Colors produced by Alabama Public Television. Bass is a recipient of the Alabama State Arts Council Fellowship, an SAF/NEA Grant, and a Regional Artist Project Interdisciplinary Grant. She has had artist residencies in Oregon, California, New York, North Carolina, Mexico, Macedonia, and Italy. Her work is included in numerous collections including the High Museum (Atlanta), The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Polaroid Collection,  National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, and museums in Houston, Huntsville, Asheville, Birmingham, and Mobile.