SOFT OFFICE
BRIDGETTE BOGLE
9/8/23-10/21/23
The Weather Station is pleased to present Soft Office, a site specific installation by artist Bridgette Bogle
“Public” and “private” have largely been put in oppositional categories. COVID-19 confused public space in a major way. Suddenly, the office space was moved home and the studio was also the nursery. Spaces became pliable. Bridgette Bogle tangles and weaves together the separate categories of the private domestic vs public through installation, painting, sculpture, and fiber.
Bogle uses old bed sheets, children's clothing and bras to construct wall hangings and sculptural forms that evoke comfort and the softness of a body. She particularly uses pillow forms and cushions to evoke a maternal body- one that can be seen as fruitful, abundant, but smothering at moments. Soft Office expands into the public realm and brings the used fabric forms into an office space, transforming it into a third space of comfort and curiosity. Bogle's use of color compounds the contrast between private and public. Using bright and fully saturated colors allows the work to engage in silly and activated ways: she sews, pulls, and stretches many different types of fibers. There, she finds the strength in the maternal bra straps and the tension in a baby’s bib stretched. This mirrors our own human bodies and relationships as we move and shift with age and the stuff of life, through public or private life.
Bridgette Bogle was born in Roswell, New Mexico in 1977- thirty years after the space aliens crashed there and caused such a ruckus. She received her MFA from Ohio State University in 2003. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally, including Sentimental and not, at the Rueff Gallery, Purdue University in 2019.
In 2009, she diplayed her Candy Store Grid at the Dayton Visual Art Center, consisting of a room full of 135 small paintings inspired by consumer culture. A selection from Candy Store Grid is installed at the Dayton Children’s Medical Center. Bogle was recently awarded an Artist Opportunity Grant from the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District. She currently serves as a Professor in the Art Department of Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.