Molly Springfield

Molly Springfield (born 1977) is an American conceptual artist whose work includes meticulous drawings of printed texts and visual explorations of the history of information technology.^[1] Springfield's art practice is unusual in that it combines labor-intensive drawing with conceptual and historical investigations. Her drawings and installations are typically based on texts that reveal visionary moments in the history of how people experience, organize, and reproduce information. She is best known for delicate, faithful graphite drawings of photocopied books.

In 2009, Springfield completed what she called a "translation" of the first chapter of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, consisting entirely of drawings of photocopies of every existing English translation of the novel.^[2] Art critic Kenneth Baker, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, called it an “irresistible” work “of rare conceptual elegance."^[3] The project was exhibited at Steven Wolf Fine Arts in San Francisco, where it was nominated for an AICA (International Association of Art Critics) Award for "Best Show in a Commercial Gallery Nationally,"; at Thomas Robertello Gallery in Chicago, where it was listed as one of the top 5 drawing shows of the year by Newcity Magazine; and the Baltimore Museum of Art, where it was nominated for the Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize.

A previous installation by Springfield, exhibited in 2006, was based on the life and writings of William Henry Fox Talbot, the polymath who invented negative-positive photography. The installation—a mix of conceptual drawing, experimental photography, and historical homage—included drawings of photocopies of the introduction to The Pencil of Nature, secondary sources discussing Talbot's photographic discoveries, and the results of Springfield's own experiments with calotype photography using cutouts from Talbot's scientific notebooks. Other previous work includes a major series of graphite drawings of photocopies of books concerning seminal moments in the history of conceptual art of the late 1960s and early 1970s.^[4]

Springfield's work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at galleries in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States and Europe, and reviews in publications including Artforum, Art Papers, The Village Voice, The New Yorker, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Chicago Tribune. She received her MFA from the University of California at Berkeley and was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2006. She has taught art at various institutions, including Berkeley, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and George Washington University.

References

1. ^ Huan Hsu, Text Messaging: Molly Springfield, Washington City Paper, Mar. 24, 2006.
2. ^ New "Translation" of Proust, Baltimore Sun, June 27, 2009.
3. ^ Kenneth Baker, Proust in 'Translation' at Wolf, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 28, 2009.
4. ^ Amoreen Armetta, Molly Springfield, ARTFORUM, Jan. 2009.

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Name	Springfield, Molly
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Date of birth	1977
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