J Stoner Blackwell
b. 1977
J Stoner Blackwell was born in 1977 in New Orleans, USA. They live and work in Bennington, Vermont, USA where they are a Faculty Member in Visual Arts at Bennington College. Blackwell has collected plastic carrier bags since 2004, amassing a supply of material that sits ambiguously between waste and necessity. Reinventing materials that are seen as both environmentally toxic and morally compromised is contral to their practice. Blackwell's recent works, Neveruses (never·uses), employ methods including embroidery, knitting, weaving and darning which are collaged together to create lumpish mask-like objects. They invert painting conventions by disordering the traditional protocols of form, use, and meaning, questioning the gendered and hierarchical organisation of artistic forms.
In 2016 they completed a residency at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, New Haven, CT and, in the same year, their work was the subject of a solo exhibition, Neveruses Report Progress, at the Museum of Art and Design, New York. In 2020 Blackwell had a solo exhibition at the Bennington Museum entitled Neveruses: Beyonder.