Rosemary Mayer

A comprehensive catalog on the work of New York artist Rosemary Mayer (1943–2014), Ways of Attaching provides an overview of the artist’s work, moving from early conceptual experiments of the late 1960s through to textile sculptures and drawings made in the early 1970s, before focusing on propositional and durational performances and temporary monuments made from 1977 to 1982.
Highlighting Mayer’s formal interest in draping, knotting and tethering, Ways of Attaching focuses on the artist’s process of constructing real and imagined networks and constellations, in which friends and historical figures feature in expressions of affinity and attachment. It additionally features facsimile reproductions of Mayer’s writings and newly commissioned essays reflecting on her work and the influences of astronomy, feminism, the art scene in New York in the 1960s and ’70s, poetry, religion and Renaissance painting.

Rosemary Mayer (1943–2014) produced a vast body of work that includes sculptures, outdoor installations, drawings, illustrations, artist’s books, lyrical essays and art criticism. In 1971 she began to focus on the use of fabric as a primary medium for sculpture and to participate in a feminist consciousness-raising group which contributed to her involvement in A.I.R., the first cooperative gallery for women in the US. This was a pivotal period in Mayer’s life and career, and she documented it in remarkable detail in her 1971 journal, where her plans, enthusiasms, ambitions and insecurities, as well as her opinions about the art around her, are recorded with self-awareness and honesty, along with her concerns about friendship, money and love. This illustrated edition of Excerpts from the 1971 Journal of Rosemary Mayer—previously published in a limited run of 300 copies—includes a new introduction and is expanded to twice the size of the first edition.

Rosemary Mayer (1943–2014) was a prolific artist, writer, and critic, who entered the New York art scene in the late 1960s. By the early 1970s, she became known both for her large-scale fabric sculptures—inspired by the lives of historical women—and her involvement in the feminist art movement. As the decade progressed, Mayer gravitated away from sculpture as a fixed form and the gallery as the primary setting for experiencing art. In 1977, she began to create ephemeral outdoor installations using materials such as balloons, snow, paper, and fabric. Mayer called these projects "temporary monuments," and she intended for them to celebrate and memorialize individuals and communities through their connections to place, time, and nature. Temporary Monuments: Work by Rosemary Mayer, 1977­–1982 is the first comprehensive presentation of this body of work and includes Mayer's documentation of these impermanent artworks. Mayer created photographs, writings, artists' books, and drawings that expand the realm of these projects and reflect her interest in exploring ideas through a variety of media. An introductory essay by Gillian Sneed situates Mayer within the New York art world of the 1970s and ‘80s and argues that Mayer's public art anticipated more recent practices of site-specific and socially engaged art.