Martha Tuttle, artist and educator
martha.s.tuttle @ gmail dot com
CV

From May 19, 2025

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Installation view, Oracles, 2018. Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy.

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Attributed to Master Heinrich of Constance, The Visitation, 1310–20.

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I walk along the bottom of a canyon, finding mineral matter and fragments of bones, 2025. Silk, pigment, dye, geode fragments, bronze casts of cow bones; 60 × 48 in.

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Greek sculpture of a hand found in a shipwreck, the wrist eroded by barnacles.

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A stone that thinks of Enceladus, 2020–22. Storm King Arts Center, Windsor, NY.

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From Apr 18, 2025

I am sewing clothes for myself and planning to wear them to run in the mountains. The movement of my body will mordant them with sweat and salt before they are dyed.

The silk is from the discarded husks of silkworms. In theory, this allows the silkworms to live, rather than be boiled alive for their excrement. While this is described as cruelty free, I’m reasonably sure that it is just a marketing ploy.

When my body is in motion the silk will start to shred. I will use the remnants to make paintings.

It is not at all that I find cruelty acceptable, but that I think we are engaged with acts of cruelty all the time, which I know because I like to try to trace a material to its source.

I predict on these runs that my body will chafe, and burn, and bleed. After, I will take a needle to the blisters on my feet and watch the blood ooze from my toes. I will feel my raw skin against clothing, and once again be surprised at the amount of pain exposure can cause. Obviously this is a pleasure for me.