LYNN HERRING
Exhibitions and Events
Congratulations to Lynn Herring and her X O X ! Share the Love winning both the NY NOW Winter 2022 Best Product in Home & Design and Best in Market Award, in the NY NOW Show Javits Center, New York City.
CX Silver Gallery presents Lynn Herring’s X O X ! Share the Love retrospective exhibition and events
Lynn Herring Retrospective at CX Silver Gallery Brattleboro VT
August 5 through September 5, 2021
814 Western Ave. Brattleboro VT
Contact: Adam Silver, CX Silver Gallery
XOX! Share the Love at Brattleboro Museum and Art Center Friday, August 6, 5-8 pm, Artist's talk and discussion at 6pm, 10 Vernon St. Brattleboro VT, parking in the 28 Vernon St lot. Come to Brattleboro Museum and Art Center for a public event with Lynn Herring and the XOX! Share the Love® sculptural game (It’s like Tic Tac Toe on steroids.) as Group Performance Art during August Gallery Walk.
XOX! Share the Love at Brooks Memorial Library Saturday August 7, from 2-5 pm, Artist's talk and discussion at 3pm, 224 Main St. Brattleboro VT, metered street parking and in the High/Grove parking lot. Brooks Memorial Library, Brattleboro, VT invites people of all ages to come together and connect with Xs and Os! What better way to get to know people than through play? Join us to experience Tic Tac Toe on steroids!
Meet the artist at Lynn Herring Retrospective: Opening Reception at C.X. Silver Gallery Saturday August 7, 7-8:30 pm, 814 Western Avenue, Brattleboro, VT, curbside parking.
Zoom gathering/discussion with Lynn Herring about the interactive artpiece, XOX! Share The Love Tuesday August 17, 7pm. Contact CX Silver Gallery for the zoom link.
Lynn Herring Artist Statement: XOX! Game. Share the love.
“I have re-engineered Tic-Tac-Toe to help ‘Make America Relate Again’. Turn off the news, take a break from social media. Gather your people and sit down to play XOX! Share the Love. It’s a colorful, wonky-shaped sculptural game that kicks your brain into high gear, increases your strategic prowess and visual awareness.
“To help counteract the stress, fear, divisiveness and negativity that all of the cultural and political toxicity is causing us, I decided to design a sculptural piece to help us to connect with each other. I call it the XOX! Game. The XOX! Game is the centerpiece of a larger playful environment. For example, in a community center, a public building or a gallery space there is a backdrop of large X and O prints and small sculptural X and O pieces to catch the attention of passersby or gallery goers. The shapes of these letters/symbols in the game, prints and sculptures are Dr. Seuss-like and brightly colored. The game has a sophisticated contemporary design, using aesthetics to attract the adult viewer and to engage in playing with another person.
With this work I am asking the question, ‘Can art bring people together to set aside their differences, to sit down and relate respectfully and playfully with each other?’ No matter what our belief systems are, let’s get together to lighten up and challenge each other to a match where it doesn’t matter who wins or loses. (Well, I do like to win, I must admit.) Dr. Stuart Brown of the National Institute of Play says ‘Play is called recreation because it makes us new again. It re-creates us and our world.’ And we certainly need to recreate our world. So, I challenge you to play this game with me.”
Lynn Herring’s XOX! Share the Love® is an art object used to help people connect for a playful and sane moment in this time of cultural and political toxicity, a work of art that utilizes ubiquitous iconic symbols, playful shapes and forms, and vibrant colors to attract and to stimulate viewer interaction. With elements of the tic tac toe game, XOX! Share the Love is a reimagined strategic game. By design, it encourages engagement and connection over division, joy and resilience over aggression and defensiveness. It is a project that transcends the boundaries of any one discipline with research rooted in social psychology related to play, visual communications including principles of advertising and graphic design, game development, digital fabrication, sculptural skills and hand finishing, public art, social practice art and community engagement. Herring will also be showing prints, sculpture and performance photographs in addition to multimedia installations.
Lynn Herring came to New York in her twenties to pursue a career as an advertising art director and to develop her studio practice as a visual artist. She ended up taking a break from her advertising career and graduated from School of Visual Arts with honors in 2008 with a BFA in Sculpture. After graduation, Herring had the remarkable opportunity to show her videos at the Pera Museum in Istanbul, Turkey before her eventual move to the Hudson Valley. In Kingston, NY in 2016, Herring found studio space in Kingston’s Brush Factory, an amazing 100-year old industrial space filled with artists and entrepreneurs quietly living and making their work. In 2019, Herring completed her MFA studies in sculpture and printmaking at SUNY New Paltz where she graduated with honors while developing a new body of work designed to bring people together with art. Herring’s studio work is influenced by her career in advertising where bold simple imagery and witty short headline copy are used to execute complex strategies. Her sculpture and print work have a clean graphic aesthetic on the one hand and a cartoon-like form and line quality on the other. It is as if Donald Judd and Dr. Seuss collided with each other. Herring's interest in minimalism, contemporary culture, social psychology, spirituality, play and humor also inform her work. Exhibitions of Herring’s work include The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, WAAM museum in Woodstock, NY, the Wired Gallery in High Falls, NY and at the Pera Museum in Istanbul, Turkey.
For more on Lynn Herring’s work, visit the Gallery page, Herring’s personal site, or Herring’s presence on Artsy.
XOX! Share The Love: the back story: vimeo.com/519720805
More about the game art piece itself: www.xoxsharethelove.com/copy-of-about-xox
Lynn Herring Interview with Yale University Radio: museumofnonvisibleart.com/interviews/lynn-herring
About the venues:
Founded in 1972, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center presents rotating exhibits of contemporary art, complemented by lectures, artist talks, film screenings, and other public programs. BMAC is open Wednesday-Sunday, 10-4. Admission is on a “pay-as-you-wish” basis. Located in historic Union Station in downtown Brattleboro, at the intersection of Main Street and Routes 119 and 142, the Museum is wheelchair accessible.
Brooks Memorial Library is an anchor destination for downtown at the north end of Main Street. More than 135,000 patrons visited the library in 2018. A hub for information, recreation, cultural programming and personal connection and interaction, it is open to all ages and free of charge.
C. X. Silver Gallery features unique, innovative, inspiring and contemplative work of contemporary artists as well as estates of recent artists. The Gallery focuses on art that is ancient and contemporary. The artworks range from painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, multimedia and video work to installations, curated collections, participatory art, and art-as-food-as-art.
