Casemore Gallery will be showing Sonya Rapoport’s work in the FOG Design+Art fair, including Yarn Drawing #10, above. Created in 1976, the first year she made work that explored computers, it used continuous-feed printout paper that she chanced upon in the basement of the math building at UC Berkeley. She drew into the found printed data with colored pencil, ink stamp, typewriter, and letter stencils, stitching the sheets together with colorful yarn.
In 1977 Rapoport wrote, “my work is an aesthetic response triggered by scientific data. The format is computer print-out, a ritualistic symbol of our technological society.” By the early 1980s, Rapoport had learned to code and was using the computer to analyze and visualize data. At a time when computers were primarily used for business, science, and military applications, Rapoport was gathering and processing data about what she called “soft material,” including her biorhythms, her shoe collection, her home, and the objects on her dresser, an approach she characterized as a feminist use of new technology.
Casemore Gallery
FOG Design+Art 2024 | Booth 314
January 18-21, 2024
Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
Casemore Gallery presents works by Sonya Rapoport, Raymond Saunders, Sean McFarland, and Henna Vainio