The Invisible Nature of Mica Marder
(12/17/2009) Mica Marder’s middle name, Invisible, seems to suit his disposition. He’s a fairly quiet guy and seems quick to duck away from frivolous attention. Be it nurture or nature, the name agrees with him.
The natural world dominates the art of Mica Marder, above, carving a whale at his studio in Springs. Photo by Doug Young
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What he does cultivate is the metaphor for which his middle name stands. His parents, Charles and Kathleen Marder, gave him this name as a kind of caveat to the invisible dangers of abusing the environment, and this appreciation of the natural world shapes both his work and life.
The artist’s first solo exhibit was in April 2004 at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, just a few steps away from his studio, as well as the Marders family home. The gallery was the perfect place to get his feet wet, as Mr. Marder and his three brothers had spent the better part of their youth exploring the area surrounding Accabonac Harbor. The show featured portraits of animals native to this region, as well as abstractions, which could also be considered native, as Springs is viewed by many as the cradle of Abstract Expressionism.
The Ashawagh Hall show came shortly after the artist graduated from Emerson College in East Essex, south of London. Having struggled with learning disabilities in his primary education, Emerson’s alternative approach was an ideal fit. The college runs an international program that is rooted in anthroposophy, a philosophy based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. This philosophy deems that in order to understand the workings of the world, people must first have an understanding of humanity.
That Mr. Marder studied art in such an intuitive and experiential environment is not surprising. It speaks to where he came from, as well as where his work has led since he returned. Following the success of his first exhibit, the artist’s older brother, Silas, was eager to mount another show and consequently founded the Silas Marder Gallery in a converted a barn on the site of Marders Nursery in Bridgehampton.
“We’ve always had a clear understanding of Mica’s talent, and a long-term plan for how his artwork would be shown,” the gallerist wrote. “From the first show at Ashawagh Hall, we tried to strike a balance between the integrity of the connection to the local area and its reach into the larger art market. The focus is to honor the fact that it is made here in Springs, while exhibiting it and placing it in collections in other parts of the world.”
And so they did, exhibiting drawings, paintings, and sculptures throughout the country, and selling the work to several prestigious collectors. To ensure that his brother can work without interruption, Silas provides him with a steady supply of paper and canvas. With work habits that are at times unyielding, it gave the artist the freedom to work on numerous pieces at once.
“Some of the paintings in the studio right now I’ve been working on for almost a year, so it helps to have other canvases to turn to” the artist said. “It frees you up when you are stuck. At the same time, you get
 Morgan McGivern
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to a certain point in a painting where you almost have to ruin it.”
There is a definite immediacy to Mr. Marder’s process, and that energy is transferred onto his artwork. Drawing what he sees in everyday life has developed into a number of series based on the animals that share the landscape where he lives, works, and plays. Each succession of drawings conveys not only the form but also the movement and vitality of the wildlife depicted.
A group of pheasants that run amok near the Marder house became a flock of drawings in which their erratic movement is caught in the mark-making and the brightly colored paint chips collaged into a colorful tail. A drawing, “Playing Dog,” of one of the family’s young cattle dogs is full of blue and black flecks and lines as she giddily crouches over a ball. Her wagging tongue is just a scratch of red, and despite the simplicity of the drawing, you’d probably recognize her from it. A series of lobsters are even more colorful, but their movement seems slower and more deliberate somehow, as if they were elderly.
“Portraits of Nature,” the title of his most recent show at the Silas Marder Gallery, focused primarily on birds of prey, represented in both drawings and paintings. The drawings are again quick and seem to capture the subject in the moment before or after the kill. Some owls sit stoically in the center of the paper, while others almost break the edge of the page as they aggressively descend on their prey.
The contradiction of the birds’ dual nature is also reflected in the work’s execution. While their bodies are rendered with thick paint layered in line and color, the movement of a talon or wing is translated with a quick black line sometimes shadowed by a white brushstroke. In his paintings these creatures seem to float up and recede in an environment specific to nature, rather than man’s interpretation of it. In this medium he
In some of Mica Marder’s portraits of birds of prey, the creatures sit stoically, while others aggressively descend on their soon-to-be kill. Photo by Gary Mamay
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indulges more in the surfaces throughout the canvas, cutting and scraping over the painting and fearlessly throwing whatever might stick onto the canvas regardless of convention.
He convincingly incorporates the tools he has developed in abstraction to increase the impact of the figurative. The exhibit included several sculptures, most made from found materials. A small writhing octopus is made from rebar, and a cardboard whale is so thick with acrylic paint it is reminiscent of piling tar. The adaptive reuse of agricultural artifacts and industrial remnants is prevalent in much of his artwork. A shed the artist uses for welding was originally used to store tools for the family’s firewood business, and the property surrounding it is a junkman’s jackpot. The treasure trove of antique farm equipment and beautifully rusted debris has accumulated for as long as the Marders have owned the land. Now it quietly waits to be reincarnated as artwork.
“It has to do with not wanting to throw away nice stuff,” Mr. Marder said. “Even if it’s ruined or doesn’t work anymore there could still be another use or purpose for it.”
As with much of this three-dimensional work, Mr. Marder allows the materials to lead him to the final form. Hanging on the outside wall of his welding shed is a multi-pronged head of an eel spear, which has the general shape of a pitchfork but the elegance of a wrought-iron balustrade. Inside the small, dark shed is another spear that the artist constructed. It hangs against a backdrop of white fabric and is accompanied by several other simple metal forms — a bird, a whale, and a few basket-like shapes, much in the style of a Pablo Picasso line drawing. As each shape reveals its character, a subtle narrative appears and the elements form a kind of mural depicting a fishing trip or a morning of clamming.
Mr. Marder cited the influences of Alberto Giacometti, Constantin Brancusi, Jean Dubuffet, and Picasso but also artists such as Anselm Keifer and Joseph Beuys. He is not afraid of being associated with Art Brut or Outsider Art, and in fact he seems to relate to their lack of pretense. The artist can describe the nature of a porgy with three pieces of rusty sheet metal, a plastic disk, and an old nail, or sculpt a bull from clay, and polish its fired surface to an elegant bronze finish with mere shoe polish.
Outside the trappings of aesthetic terms and categories, Mr. Marder seems to have a firm hold on what his work is about, and that is nature. Having recently turned his aesthetic conscience to more widespread concerns, he has created a series of works about global environmental issues that pack a visceral punch. In one painting a high horizon line portrays an underwater viewpoint of a whale spearing. Another work from this series portrays the construction of the interoceanic highway in the Peruvian Amazon, the scale and proportion of which speaks to the colossal impact it might have on the environment.
When asked where he sees his career heading or what his expectations are for the future, Mr. Marder referred to the subject matter in this new body of work. “In a way it’s almost like some of these things, like the whales, they pick you,” he said, communicating his number-one priority — making visible through his art the effect of these controversial crimes against nature.