Dawn Clements papers (Ms.2019.010)

Biographical/Historical Note

Dawn Marie Clements was born on April 14, 1958, in Woburn Massachusetts, to Bruce and Carlene (Johnson) Clements. She grew up in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, with her three brothers, Philip, Stephen, and Carl. She graduated from Brown University in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts in semiotics and went on to graduate school at State University of New York at Albany where she earned her Master of Fine Arts.

Clements became known for her work with Sumi ink and ballpoint pen on small to large-scale paper panels which explored interior spaces. Her inspiration typically came from her surroundings, television shows, and old movies, and she was especially interested in the spaces that women occupy. She often cut and pasted paper together to edit and compose a completed drawing, adding paper as necessary to create the desired scale. Through her active process the paper became distressed with folds, wrinkles, and seams. She described her work as "a kind of visual diary of what I see, touch, and desire. As I move between the mundane empirical spaces of my apartment and studio, and the glamorous fictions of movies, apparently seamless environments are disturbed through ever-shifting points of view."

By 1993 Clements was represented in the Venice Biennale. Later in the 1990s she was in group exhibitions at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, the University Art Museum in Albany and numerous other places. Her work was also exhibited in the Whitney Biennial 2010 and is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), The Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs, NY), The Deutsche Bank Collection, The Saatchi Collection (London), The Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington (Seattle, WA), and Colecccao Madeira Corporate Services (Portugal). Clements, who lived and worked in Brooklyn, had numerous solo exhibitions as well, including several at Pierogi Gallery in New York, which represented her. Those included a 2012 collaboration with the sculptor Marc Leuthold.

During her time at Brown University, Clements met and dated fellow classmate James Barron though the two would later split while still in college. In 1994, Clements married the Italian photographer and installation artist Roberto Bocci, but their marriage ended four years later in divorce. Approximately 15 years after her graduation from Brown, Clements ran into Barron on a city street and the two would reconnect, becoming lifelong friends. Barron helped cared for Clements when she became ill with breast cancer in 2016 and became her co-executor, along with Ann Dufresne. Clements passed away in a hospice in Bronx, New York, on December 4, 2018. She was 60 years old.

[This biography was partially taken from Clements' biography on the Pierogi art gallery website and her New York Times obituary.]