I found Martha Rich in a cloud of sawdust as I entered the gallery that Monday morning. The Philadelphia-based artist was here for a single week, equipped with a bandsaw, some power tools, and a bunch of ideas she wanted to bring to life on the SPACE Gallery walls. For the next five days, a team of friends, staffers, and interns like myself would help her assemble and mount her first solo exhibition in Maine.
Born in Bangor, Maine, Martha had been living what she called a “typical suburban life” in Los Angeles until, 24 years ago, she quit the corporate world and left her HR job at Universal Studios to become a full-time artist at the age of 37.
Since then, Rich has tried her hand at many mediums, maintaining her distinctly fun and colorful style as she works across canvas, fabric, wall, and wood. Her commercial work has been used in music videos, advertising, magazines, book covers, and products and she has shown paintings in galleries across the U.S. and internationally.
“I get bored,” she told me. “I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again.”
Martha knows how to mix it up. While she plans to use metal for her next exhibition, she stuck to birch plywood for Take A Load Off, using power tools she brought from home to create witty, whimsical designs of lobsters, cats, fish, and talking heads. In addition to her array of creatures are many speech bubbles containing snippets of overheard conversations.
I asked Martha about her eavesdropping habit and how it came to be such a prominent part of her work.
“In Philadelphia, I ride the bus, and I rode this bus to my school, University of Pennsylvania,” said Rich, who got her MFA in Painting in 2011. She now teaches classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.
“It’s the 40 bus, and it goes through a whole bunch of different neighborhoods,” she continued. “You get this wide variety of people, like moms or dads dropping off their kids at school, surgeons going to University of Pennsylvania Hospital, and then someone maybe who’s going to a methadone clinic. You hear everybody just telling their stories out loud. Somebody would be talking about surgery, or getting out of prison, or they would tell some silly story.”
That’s how she began a practice of writing down snippets of overheard stories in a little book. She hopes, amid the madness of her SPACE installation, to get into Portland and hear what the locals are saying too.
While the phrases and commentary in her art is often locally sourced, the process of choosing who says what is far more personal.
“It has to make me laugh,” she says, pairing on the gallery wall a spotted snake with the existential question “Who am I?” painted in bright teal letters. This juxtaposition, as she describes it, is her way of delving into the absurd through the everyday, taking quotes from the streets and mixing them into a magical world of talking bears.
“Living, in general, is absurd,” she says, taking this as a cue to not overthink her work and instead find humor in it. “Not everyone sees the world this way, but I think I connect with the people who do.”
Three days before her August installation opened, sitting on the gallery floor coating her latest creations in glossy white gesso, Martha kept one eye on the Phillies game playing on her laptop. The midsummer losing streak they’d been on is nothing to worry about – “they’re just getting this out of their system before the important part of the season.”
But beyond keeping tabs on the local baseball team, her care for her community comes through. She’s currently serving her second term as a democratic committee person in Philadelphia’s second ward, Division 10, helping to get out the vote. Walking around Philadelphia, even just stopping into the PHL airport, reveals several public works made by Martha over the years. Her next project will be a mural done on the city’s —— Street.
Having grown up in a politically conservative community, Martha understands what a certain kind of audience is receptive to. She aims for subtlety.
“I’m making political statements, just in a more polite, palatable way,” she said. “There are different ways to approach change. Sometimes you have to be loud and then there are times where you have to partner that with quiet. I want to plant a seed.”
By Friday afternoon, just a few hours before the gallery opening, Martha’s pragmatic, get-things-done approach to life and art is evident on the walls. The final product is as exciting as the process, with over 130 hand-painted pieces hanging.
“I don’t know how I ended up doing this,” Martha says, taking it all in from the sunny bay window, “But it’s just a lot of fun.”
Martha Rich’s exhibition Take A Load Off, with X.Fang and Heather Ramsdale, is up in SPACE’s 534 Gallery through October 12th. Gallery hours are Thursday and Friday 12-6 pm and Saturday 12-4 pm. Martha’s works are also available to purchase — check here for availability.
