Kern Samuel ( b. Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies, 1990 ) is an artist based in New Haven. In this limited edition of coconut fiber doormats (designed for Maiden Name), Samuel expands his drawing practice to the floor, offering a work of art to mark the threshold of the home with a pattern evocative of other boundaries and passages. In his broader practice, Samuel's often elliptical work develops a poetics of the everyday, incorporating food products in a recent series of sculptural paintings; snatches of the plainsong of contemporary American English in earlier quilted wall hangings. It has been said that poetry offers an opportunity to listen in on a conversation between the poet and her or himelf; Samuel's work has this hermetic quality, making its disclosures all the more precious. He does this with work that marries the rigor and austerity of a certain conceptualism with a profound sensitivity for, and appreciation of, material in all its sensuousness. 18" x 30"
