COVID-19
Encounters while walking in a forest might include: peeling birch bark, dead and rotting logs, the mysterious foam that builds up in the slow spots of a creek, abandoned bird nests, wondrous but alarming fungi, weather-beaten litter. I don’t know exactly what Judith Mullen observes on her daily walks among the trees, but I know that I am reminded of such findings as these when I look at the sculptures in Linger, her solo exhibition at Devening Projects. There’s nothing naturalistic about Mullen’s twisting constructions of plaster, yarn, ace bandages, resin and chicken wire, not their materials or their colors, which range from mint and bubblegum to ivory, gold and emerald. Rather, their relationship to the forested path is one of affinity, of thin curling shapes and curious growths and puddling liquids, of attention paid to what is present, to a complex place that demands nothing of a human being other than respect. If inspiration or illumination result, all the better for it.
—Lori Waxman 2020-09-02 1:30 PM