Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
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Rachel Perry painstakingly sculpts tin foil into letters. Language's inability to really communicate "what we humans are trying to describe" is an ongoing fascination for the artist. ABOVE, FROM LEFT: Lost in My Life (fruit stickers) (2010); Lost in My Life (wrapped books) (2010). COVER, AT LEFT: Lost in My Life (silver twist ties #1) (2011). PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY (LOST IN MY LIFE SERIES); IAN TRAVIS BARNARD (PERRY) A fruit sticker, a plastic twist tie, a price tag: Rachel Perry collects, cherishes, and creates world-class art out of them—thousands and thousands of them. The current artist-in-residence at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Perry, 54, has spent her career exploring how our identity is defined by modern consumer culture. She's a collector first, hand-peeling labels and meticu- lously preserving them on wax paper; then, she is a sculptor, photographer, performance artist, and painter. Her mission: "What I am doing here is trying to com- ment on the daily life of one small life on this planet as it may relate to art, and that is all." Born in Tokyo, Perry earned a BA from Connecticut College and a diploma and fifth-year certificate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She was honored with the Catherine Boettcher Fellowship at the MacDowell Colony and is a two-time winner of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Award for Excellence in Drawing and Sculpture. Her work is displayed in numerous museums and private collections around the world. Her solo show, "What Do You Really Want?," is currently on view at—literally on the outside wall of—the Gardner Museum. "Rachel Perry: What Do You Really Want?" runs through June at the Gardner Museum, New Wing Façade, 25 Evans Way, 617-566-1401; gardnermuseum.org. Perry's work will also be featured at "First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA," which runs August 17, 2016 through January 16, 2017, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., 617-478-3100; icaboston.org. rachelperrystudio.com R AC H E L P E R R Y THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM'S ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE CREATES MASTERFUL ART FROM WHAT THE REST OF US THROW AWAY. BY LISA PIERPONT BOSTON MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 129