Marley Freeman | KARMA
Climate Impact Report
a self area, 2021, oil and acrylic on linen, 54 × 54⅛ inches; 137.2 × 137.5 cm (unframed), 54¾ × 54⅞ × 1⅜ inches; 139.1 × 139.4 × 3.5 cm (framed)
Marley Freeman
take care
Karma
22 East 2nd Street New York, NY, 10003
June 10–July 22, 2022Introduction
Karma is pleased to present take care, a solo exhibition by Marley Freeman, on display at 22 E 2nd Street from June 10th to July 22nd, 2022. This is Freeman’s second solo show with the gallery.
Working in oil and hand-mixed acrylic, Marley Freeman layers paint to depict abstract forms and veils of color. Rooted in a process of patient revisiting, her complex compositions can take months to complete. Freeman’s paintings eschew rigid rules, oscillating between transparency and opacity, sparseness and density, luminosity and austerity. Glimpses of the representational world thread through her magnetic compositions, in which amorphic shapes become vessels for emotion and personal attachment. Her titles are often excerpted from poetry and fiction, provoking deeper inquiry.
take care is the record of Freeman’s ongoing exploration of the expressive capacity of painting. Freeman’s paintings carve out a visual language that embraces dichotomy and synthesis—a friendship fostered with color and form. Along the way, paintings come into existence as evidence of a more thoughtful, vibrant world.
The show will be accompanied by a forthcoming catalog featuring newly-commissioned essays by Cathleen Chaffee, Francesca Wade, and Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves.
Artist Climate Approach
Painting is scalable - a small scale painting uses, by scale, less material than a large scale painting. The majority of my paintings are small, smaller than the length of a toilet brush. A small painting has less footprint at every stage of its life. If I can make a painting that has a big impact on a small scale - that is exciting.
For this show at Karma I made forty five small and five larger paintings, sixteen of which are installed. A tube of oil paint lasts me years, in part because the majority of the paintings are small and not thick in volume. I buy used tubes of oil paint off ebay. I like the randomness of buying paint that I may not have picked out.
Over the last few years I’ve learned how to not put paint down the drain almost ever. For acrylic--- I wash the brushes in buckets then let the water evaporate and congeal then throw the dried brick of plastic in the garbage. For oil paint--- similarly when the brush cleaning oil gets too dirty I put it in a glass jar and let it evaporate and harden until I can throw the solid oil block in the garbage. With oil brushes Instead of washing in the sink I wipe them as much as possible on towels which can dry and be thrown away. I reuse packing plastic sheeting for transporting between my two studios and the galleries. I use a Berkey water filter instead of buying bottled water. No painting ever gets thrown away- everything gets used/sold/donated/gifted/stored. For oil mediums I use various things including lavender and safflower oil. For acrylic, I use a single matte medium which I mix with water.
For this show I asked my friend Lukas Geronimas to collaborate with me on the “frames” for three works. Lukas is a sculptor who lives in LA who makes playful things out of wood, plastic & metal and we have collaborated like this in the past. I like bringing his materials' use into dialogue with the painted surfaces in the show.
The other paintings in the show were framed by Downing Frames in Long Island City. They are the frames I've used for years.
I share two studios with two different artists, one in Massachusetts and one in NYC. I drive between the two studios on an almost weekly basis. Both studios I share with other artists. The larger works for this show did not fit in my car so they were produced in my NYC studio to avoid a van transport to the gallery.
Gallery Climate Policy (KARMA)
At Karma, we place our team, community, and the planet as top priority. The gallery has already committed to a wide array of climate-conscious practices and initiatives to lower our carbon footprint, including the use of file sharing links, QR codes, and cloud servers to reduce energy and paper use. We actively work to reduce our emissions and carbon footprint by setting lower AC and heat levels across Karma locations, ensuring that lights and electronics are turned off or unplugged when not in use.
Karma offers filtered dispensable water on site to eliminate the overconsumption of plastic bottles, limits single use plastics including cups and bin liners, and encourages the reuse of packing and shipping materials whenever possible. Working to provide an example for our local community and other galleries, Karma has also delivered comprehensive staff direction on proper waste disposal and separation of plastic and paper recycling.
The gallery also recognizes the art world’s broader contribution to the issue of climate change and pledges to combat this negative impact. Firstly, Karma incentivizes our team’s use of public transportation, including providing bicycles to several of our commuting staff members, and advance planning to increase the consolidation of shipments. The gallery is also actively working to limit the number of flights required and staff members traveling for each fair by traveling on the same flight and limiting the number of people traveling.
Many of our artists, including Marley Freeman, have centered the exponential impacts of climate change in their work and practice. Karma dedicates itself to making changes that will maximize our positive impact on the environment and reduce our contribution to global climate change. Our long-term climate goals at Karma include continuing to lower air travel, prioritizing low-emission transportation and shipments, and tracking our carbon footprint.
In order to increase transparency and ensure accountability, Karma staff members have opportunities to review and contribute to this climate action pledge. We encourage these conversations and actively combat oppressive systems that may impede equity in the gallery such as racism, implicit biases, and wage inequality. Most importantly, the gallery vows to continue to make decisions that will best impact our Karma community and the planet.
Emissions Report
Travel: 0.54 tCO2e
Marley’s drive back and forth MA > NYC
Ten trips of 130 Miles return. A total of 1,300 miles: 0.54 tCO2e
Shipping: 0.71 TCO2e
Relative to the gallery, shipping is all done on a local level (with the exception of the works that Marley and Lukas collaborated on, as Lukas’s studio is in LA). 2,800 miles diesel van: 0.66 tCO2e
Marley studio > gallery warehouse > gallery:
New studio - 2.4 miles from warehouse
Old east village studio - 5.4 miles from warehouse
Gallery “in-house” transport = Distance between gallery and storage diesel van = ~7.5 miles: 0.02 tCO2e
Frames shipping (local). Downing > warehouse diesel van = ~10.9 miles: 0.03 tCO2e
Because of the domestic scale of the paintings, and the fact that Marley is a “local” artist, Karma is able to take more efficient considerations for transportation.
We opt to use a sprinter van to collect artworks from Marley’s studio, rather than scheduling a truck. I take care to route our art handlers’ runs each day to be as efficient as possible with reasonable handling and load, but with the scale of Marley’s work, this is rarely a concern and it’s more a pleasure for the art handlers to visit Marley and her squash chair! When making a collection from Marley’s studio, we are able to re-use a c-bin and dividers for safe local transport, and Marley will wrap works directly in poly using reused/recycled material, as she has stated above.
For paintings that Marley had framed in collaboration with Lukas, the works needed to be shipped from NY to LA. Lukas reused packing materials that he had in the studio to pack for transport. Karma consolidated works on the same fine art shuttle where possible. We packed using recyclable materials such as cardboard for transport in either direction.
All framed works required newly-sized packing once the frames were fitted (as the works became larger once they were framed, they “outgrew” their existing packing!) When artworks come back from Downing, they come back in a new shadowbox, or cardboard corners where applicable for less material use.
For the installation of the show, works were all brought to the gallery exhibition space for selection and hanging. As 16 of the 45 works were included in the exhibition, transport of the works back to art storage was necessary at the end of installation. The smaller works returned to storage in a single van run — scheduled in a more efficient way than having some works at the warehouse and requiring back-and-forth van runs to and from the warehouse during the week of installation.
For the exhibition lighting, half the lights are turned off to allow natural lighting from our skylights to light the works and space — and allowing for reduced electricity use.
Materials use
Studio:
Wood Stretcher - 140 individual bars
Wood and aluminum stretchers - 5 pre fab stretchers
Linen - 21 yards
Watercolor paper - 12 sheets
Frames - 26 frames
Collaborative frames - 3
Watercolor paint - various
Oil paint - various
Acrylic paint - various
Gesso - 1 gallon
Chalk - 2 lbs
Acrylic medium - 1 gallon
Oil medium - 3 oz
Framing:
The framing for the works in the show were produced by Downing Frames in LIC, and 3 unique frames were made in collaboration between Marley Freeman and Lukas Geronimas.
From Lukas Geronimas:
Regarding my material use. No new material was bought to make these three frames. I used an old frame that was given to me by Graham Collins I think when he left LA, as well as scraps from my inventory of aluminum and acrylic. I do buy new acrylic sheet when needed, but have learned to use it more sparingly. My aluminum is bought from the offcuts section of the suppliers warehouse. The random form of scraps, discards and failures dictate my work’s outcome much of the time, and is oftentimes the true content of the work. I do couple these elements with manipulated stock materials which I purchase from suppliers, so I'm not a hero or anything.
Material use and process:
A larger found/gifted wooden frame (24x36 range) was cut up and reassembled, so the frame got smaller, but more dense.I used a bandsaw and a scroll saw to make most of the cuts, and sanded some while leaving others raw. I wish I knew how to use a chainsaw!
For the aluminum frame I used a 20 by 50 inch piece of 1/8" scrap. It was hand polished and adhered to a subframe which was made of plywood (about the same quantity, 20 x 50 inches, from scraps) which was attached permanently to the painting.
The plexi frame was made out of a roughly 24 x 48 inch piece of 1/8” clear acrylic sheet, and inside it are various bits of detritus, from the crazy wooden frame, an old carbon filter, and studio stuff. I did go and buy the dried grass from a store down the street, after trying some pieces of grass I picked locally and not being satisfied with how they were looking.
From Anan Dai at Downing Frames:
Frame finishes are selected either in person or via FaceTime, frames are put in production - the moldings are always the same so we keep them in stock (meaning no extra ripping or waste of wood materials), frame finishes differ every time, some are water based, some are alcohol based, some are waxes. When mixing the finishes, the water based and alcohol based finishes will all end up going into the water system despite their solubility. The rags that are used to wipe the surfaces end up going in the landfill. Wax or raw wood finishes are more waste friendly to consider using. For float frames, there is no use of plexi. Plexi comes from the manufacturer with plastic coatings that ends up in the trash. For packing framed works, cardboard and poly sheets are used for making shadow boxes.
Closing Thoughts
Participating in this initiative has given a unique opportunity to reflect on our efficiency, materials use, and how we can make a more conscious effort to reuse materials and take more sustainable measures moving forward. The impact of our sustainability stems from the choices we make, especially in logistics as in the example outlined here.
Credits:
The Climate Impact Report was prepared by the artist Marley Freeman, Becca Zucker (Registrar/Archivist, KARMA), Lukas Geronimas, Anan Dai (she/her), Frame Design Specialist, Downing Frames, Deville Cohen (Artists Commit).