Hassell Fabrication
300 Dead Indian Memorial Rd, Ashland, OR 97520
The artwork is located on the exterior of the building and is visible from the road.
Featured Artists
Alyse Emdur
be mine but
Medium: LED lights, Plexiglas
Date: 2023
Artist Statement
As a teenager, I wore an acrylic yellow sweater. It did not get a lot of use in Florida and I don’t know where it is now but its message stayed with me. It featured embroidered frogs hopping on lily pads with foxtails and tiny pink flowers. Along the length of the left sleeve read in green block letters, “BE MINE BUT”. The right sleeve read, “DON’T EXPECT MIRACLES”. The origins of this sweater are ambiguous. I found it at a thrift store and it appeared to be both mass produced and hand embroidered. My work is often inspired by found text and images- vintage books and cartoons, outdated magazines, contemporary vernacular photography. I collect, archive, and represent the ephemera of our culture. My work investigates American idealism through the act of looking and playing with our artifacts.
For Art Beyond, I am recreating the text of that sweater with Neon lights and will install it in the industrial landscape of Dead Indian Memorial Road in Ashland. The sign will be a visual break from the area’s business advertisements and for passersby, it will create a question. Be mine but don’t expect miracles? Be mine but accept me for the complex human who I am? Be mine but it will be hard work?
I wish to thank Brett Hassell of Hassell Fabrication for graciously hosting this installation at his roadside location.
About the Artist
Alyse Emdur is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Ashland, Oregon. Her drawings, paintings, collages, installations, and lens-based projects use earnest humor to face loneliness, existential crisis, social struggle and the desire to escape. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, the Stranger, Artforum, Art in America, Modern Painters, Cabinet Magazine, Huffington Post, the Atlantic, BBC News, Wired Magazine, Vrij Nederland Magazine, Art Papers Magazine, COLORS Magazine, and Foam Magazine.
Her work has been exhibited at Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Library Foundation of LA, Institute of Contemporary Art LA, Odd Ark LA, Rogers Office, Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, The Newspace Center for Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, High Desert Test Sites, Machine Projects, Rutgers University, The New School Parsons School of Design, University of Michigan, Evergreen State College, Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Los Angeles Valley College, 356 Mission, Haverford College, Clark Humanities Museum at Scripps College, Loyola Marymount University, Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY, Arcadia University, California Museum of Photography, Nina Johnson Gallery, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Noorderlicht Gallery and Melkweg Gallery in the Netherlands, Lambent Foundation, University of Texas Visual Arts Center, University of Southern California, Bezalel University in Israel, Bas Fisher Invitational, Twenty Twenty Projects, La Montagne Gallery, Laura Bartlett Gallery, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Department of Safety in Anacortes, WA, In Situ in Paris, France, The LAB in SF, Jack the Pelican, Guild and Greyshkul, and The Cooper Union.
Her public commissions have been funded by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the City of West Hollywood, Heart of Los Angeles, and the Music Center in Los Angeles. Her book Prison Landscapes was published by Four Corners Books, London in 2013. Emdur is a graduate of the Cooper Union and holds an MFA from the University of Southern California.
Learn more at alyseemdur.com