Installation

Although the Woodman Family Foundation archives are starting to take shape, there is still much more material to process before we are ready to open them up to scholars and researchers. Currently, we are processing George Woodman’s paper tiles and related plans, descriptions and documentation so that we can better understand this key aspect of his practice, which took his work with pattern off the canvas and into space and situation.

Betty Woodman’s Chinese Pleasure (2007-2008) was commissioned by the U.S. Department of State Art in Embassies Program for the United States Embassy in Beijing. Woodman was inspired by and freely borrowed from visual influences all over the world and throughout art history, here incorporating three distinct moments in the history of Chinese art, ranging from Sichuan bronzes to popular culture into this dramatic installation.

George Woodman’s The Rochester Carpet was a sprawling, patterned mosaic temporarily covering the floor of the Bevier Gallery at Rochester Institute of Technology in December of 1984. This site-specific work was just one of the artist’s ambitious and encompassing tile projects, extending his earlier practice as an abstract painter by employing complex systems of pattern and color across public spaces.