New Mexico-born multi-media artist Martha Tuttle presents her show “Geologies,” on display through July 10 at Guesthouse JH.

I am still processing Martha Tuttle’s exhibition at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, “An ear, a hand, a mouth, an offering, an angel.” Revisiting the images in my phone’s camera roll, I zoom in on a patch of tufted hand-spun wool or the taught seam where it connects with a swath of painted silk, creating a crisp silhouette of the aluminum stretcher bar just behind. I smile at a photo of an adult and child crouching low to examine the titular installation which consists of small natural(ish) objects—quartz, stones cast into steel, a nut casing—arranged lovingly, meticulously in the gallery corner. (What makes one material more “natural” than another? Tuttle might ask).

Conversation between Marina Adams and Martha Tuttle, published in the print issue of BOMB Magazine, Winter 2022.

Recently, I had the pleasure of working with my friend Kyle Simon, who has started Farrington Press outside of Joshua Tree, California. The press is off-grid, meaning it functions on solar power, and the water and materials Kyle brings in strapped to his pickup truck.

Martha Tuttle’s paintings can be defined by belonging, in that they are seriously invested in a material process that takes the craft of the medium as part of its subject. The spinning, weaving, and dyeing necessary to structure these objects forms their image, so the compositions are fixed inside the substrate, rather than constituting separate layers. 

Beautiful review of Martha Tuttle's new installation: a stone that thinks of Enceladus, at Storm King Art Center in the Hudson Valley.

"Ms. Tuttle has gathered boulders from Storm King’s property, most of them about knee-height, and placed them around the clearing with a contrapuntal casualness; resting on each boulder are delicate sculptures of rocks, crafted in the artist’s studio from milky glass or solid marble, and arranged with the same tossed-off elegance as the boulders themselves. These humble cairns conjoin “real” and “artificial” stones, not to mention the lichens growing on the boulders’ surfaces and the grass beneath your feet into a poem of vibrant matter."

Brian T. Leahy from Artforum delves into the philosophical underpinnings of Martha Tuttle's recent show Dance of Atoms at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.   

Review of The Dance of Atoms at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.

An interview with Martha Tuttle in her Brooklyn studio.

Review of I long and seek after at Tilton Gallery.

Review of Martha Tuttle and Henry Chapman at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.

Review of Martha Tuttle at Tilton Gallery.